A key insight I want to emphasize here is the concept of animal products as the ultimate processed food.
Basically, all nutrition grows from the ground: seeds, sunlight, and soil. That’s where all our vitamins come from, all our minerals, all the protein (all the essential amino acids). The only reason there are essential amino acids in a steak is because the cow ate them all from plants. They’re essential—we can’t make them, and the animals can’t make them either. They have to eat plants to get them. But we can cut out the middlemoo and get nutrition directly from the Earth, and, in doing so, get all the phytonutrients and fiber that are lost when plants are processed through animals. Even ultra-processed junk foods may have a tiny bit of fiber still left, but all is lost when plants are ultra-ultra-processed through animals.
Having said that, there was also a big jump in what one would traditionally think of as processed foods, and that’s the topic of this video: The Role of Processed Foods in the Obesity Epidemic.
