To lose weight, you go on a diet: you create an energy deficit by eating fewer calories, possibly supplemented with more exercise. But what about the quality of food? For example, do you burn more calories if you eat unprocessed food instead of processed food?

PROCESSED VERUS UNPROCESSED

Many dietitians and doctors nowadays advise choosing unprocessed foods, also known as whole foods. Because in the scientific literature, processed products, especially the ultra-processed, are associated with a higher risk of obesity and disease.

Whole foods come directly from nature without any processing. Think of vegetables, fruit, seeds, nuts, eggs, fish, meat or herbs. Products that are only slightly processed are often also classified as unprocessed products. Examples are milk, yogurt, artisan bread, olive oil and frozen vegetables.

However, most of the food you come across in the supermarket has been processed in a factory. This has its advantages: industrial processing makes our food safer and ensures that we can store it longer. However, the highly processed (‘ultra-processed’) foods are problematic. Think of soft drinks, ready meals, sweetened breakfast cereals, pastries, meal mixes, snack bars and so on. Per serving, they are usually high in calories, sugar, saturated fat and salt, and low in vitamins, minerals and fiber. In addition, ‘unnatural’ substances have been added, which you do not encounter in nature.

RESEARCH

It is clear that for health reasons you should mainly eat unprocessed food. But is unprocessed food also more beneficial for your body composition? For example, can you burn fat faster with it?

That last question was the subject of a study by Barr et al. A welcome study, if you consider that many coaches simply assume that for fat loss only calories count and the quality of the diet is irrelevant.

In the study, a group of eighteen participants was split in two: one group received a meal with processed food (white bread with processed cheese), the other with unprocessed food (multigrain bread with cheddar cheese). Both meals were more or less equal in calorie count and macronutrient distribution. Afterwards, participants were tested for subjective satiety (how full they felt) and for the amount of calories they burned 5-6 hours after the meal.

RESULTS

There was no difference in saturation level between the two groups. But there was a relatively large difference in the number of calories burned after the meal:

• processed: 70 kcal (11% of the meal energy)
• unprocessed: 140 kcal (20% of the meal energy)

According to the researchers, the cause of the difference lies in diet-induced thermogenesis (DIT), the energy your body needs to process food. Apparently a processed meal has about 50% less DIT than a meal with only unprocessed food. This, again, at a nearly equal number of calories and macronutrients.

Unlimited food therefore does something extra for your fat burning. However, the difference is only small, when you consider that THIS only makes up 10-15% of your daily energy expenditure.

COMMENTS

Processed food is especially unfavorable with regard to fat burning because of the degree of satiety. With bread and cheese, as in the research, it is still good, but ultra-processed foods have an unfavorable energy density (calories: volume) so that you ingest many calories in one go at a low satiety. Not good for your hunger when you are cutting. And according to another study, it leads to a higher calorie intake than eating whole foods.

Interestingly, ultra-processed foods can also have a negative effect on the maintenance of muscle mass and strength, at least in the over-40s. This is mainly due to the presence of advanced glycation end products in this type of food. More on this in this article.

In addition, in another article we discussed the influence of micronutrients on muscle growth or maintenance. From this you can conclude that it is important for your muscle mass in the long term to get enough vitamins and minerals on a daily basis. Make sure that you get enough calories in the bulk. After all, the healthier you eat, the harder it is. If you have trouble with a lot of food and still eat healthy, then liquid food is your friend. For example, think of shakes in which you throw oatmeal flour or possibly a weight gainer.

CONCLUSIONS

As a bodybuilder, you would do well to include a lot of unprocessed food in your diet. This food has a beneficial effect on your body composition in several ways compared to processed food:

• Whole foods have greater food-induced thermogenesis, which means you burn more calories after meals. This is beneficial for bodybuilders in the cut;
• Whole foods provide many vitamins and minerals that play a role in the process of muscle growth;
• Ultra-processed foods can negatively affect muscle growth or maintenance in people over 40;
• Ultra-processed foods have an unfavorable degree of saturation, which makes dieting in the cut unnecessarily difficult;
• Healthy food contributes to good health. And that ensures overall good functioning, which also benefits things such as training performance and sleep (recovery).

The above doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat processed foods at all. It’s hard to avoid since the supermarket is mostly stocked with processed foods. The most important thing is that you avoid the ultra-processed foods as much as possible, especially in the cut. Snacking in bulk is okay in our opinion, as long as it is done in moderation.

Finally, remember that you also have plenty of choice in unprocessed food. You really don’t have to eat just chicken, rice and broccoli. Do you prefer beef, pasta and spinach? Also fine. These foods have more or less the same macronutrients and are thus interchangeable. Diets are therefore not about specific foods, as diet gurus often claim, but about categories of food.