I don't believe there is consensus on what, exactly, WFPB (whole-food, plant-based) means. Different groups use it to mean different things. Restaurants and advertisers sometimes use the phrase deceptively.
I use the word 'whole' to mean 'all the ingredients/parts that were in the original food are in the final food'. I don't use it to mean 'intact'. I use the phrase 'plant-
based' to mean that
most of the food are plants.
So, to me, WFPB means a diet that is mostly plants (but may include small amounts of meat) and that the foods are in a form that you would find them in nature (except for chopping and cooking).
A lemon is a whole food. Lemon juice is not.
Tomatoes, onions, and cilantro are whole foods. Chopping them up and mixing them together into a salsa is still a 'whole' food.
Oil is not a whole food; it is a plant extract. Mixing oil in with your salsa means the salsa is no longer a 'whole' food. It is a mixture of whole foods and plant extracts.
Tomato juice is a little more complicated. If you were to squeeze a tomato to get the juice, then the result would
not be a whole food. If you put a tomato in a blender to get juice, then I would call it a 'whole' food because all the original nutrients are in the final product. (Others may disagree with this definition.) But it is not as healthy as eating an intact tomato; it seems that the blending process changes the structure of the tomato so that it is digested differently. (And it certainly changes the calorie density.)
Note: WFPB does not necessarily mean
healthy and should not be used as the sole criterion for deciding what to eat.
Cheers,
"Before Enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After Enlightenment chop wood, carry water." -- Zen proverb