Wholefood
Wholefoods are foodstuffs which have received very little or no processing before consumption. All food processing, but especially ‘ultraprocessing’, reduces the nutritional value of food. Likewise intensively grown food has lower levels of micronutrients than traditionally grown foods. By eating raw or unprocessed foods more of the dietary fibre and minerals are preserved, improving gut health, which in turn has various health benefits. While in The West wholefoods are associated with low-impact or healthy lifestyles, in reality most of the population of the world eat food with a low level of processing. In turn the lack of wholefoods drives the higher ecological footprint of the Western lifestyle, where highly processed food is a means of selling food commodities as desirable consumer products, often fortified with chemical nutrients (itself a means of marketing the ‘benefit’ of food processing) to make-up for the loss of valuable nutrients during processing.
See also: Green Revolution, Intensive farming, Low impact lifestyles, Permaculture, Ultraprocessing.