What is considered WFPB

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What is considered WFPB

Postby Alycia 123 » Tue Jul 09, 2019 3:58 am

Are canned tomatoes and lemon juice considered WFPB?
What about salsa?
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Re: What is considered WFPB

Postby sirdle » Tue Jul 09, 2019 9:21 am

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, :-P
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Re: What is considered WFPB

Postby bunsofaluminum » Tue Jul 09, 2019 4:25 pm

A good rule of thumb to follow: Reading the ingredients list, could you find each item somewhere in the store? Or, to put it another way, could you make it yourself at home? A can of tomatoes has maybe two ingredients: Tomatoes and citric acid, possibly tomato juice. Same with refried beans (the ones I buy are fat free)...pinto beans, water, salt. I could make those! Of course, refried beans being mashed are more calorie dense, and because of having a lovely smooth texture, they're easy to overeat. But yeah, they're a whole food, too.

The lemon juice. Are you drinking it with sugar and water by the glassful? Don't do that! Are you sprinkling it over food to enhance the flavor? Using it in salad dressing? Slicing and adding to your drinking water? Fully allowed on this plan.
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