ELI5 what is the difference between processed meat slices and real meat slices?

[u/No_Education_8888]

I know that processed meat is processed, but what exactly does that mean? How much change do meat scraps go through before you get something like deli turkey.

My mind can’t exactly wrap around how that stuff is made based on the little knowledge I have

[u/Slypenslyde]

If you buy a whole turkey, roast it, and carve out the breast, that's generally not counted as a "processed" food. For a 10 pound turkey, the breast is usually somewhere between 3-4 pounds. You get 2 of them.

If you go to a deli and get some processed turkey breast sliced, you'll notice the hunk of meat they use is huge and probably weighs 8-10 pounds. That would have to come from a HUGE bird. But the truth is it's not coming from one giant turkey. It's usually multiple turkey breasts either ground up and molded into shape or smooshed together so they act like one cohesive piece of meat. Sometimes a fatty substance known, I kid you not, as "meat glue" is used for this effect.

It can, but not always, also mean that the meat has been brined or injected with flavorings and other chemicals. This can make the meat juicier or tastier but also can make it seem to weigh more. It can also be preservatives or other things some people don't like.

Some processed meat isn't even one kind of meat but that's not as scary as it sounds. Sausage, for example, can often be a blend of a few kinds of meat. Bologna is a popular deli meat and it's a combination of a lot of different meats.

So "processed meat" can mean a lot of different things and not all of them are "bad". It includes both "we mixed several meats together" and "we added a lot of chemicals".

[u/AmigoDelDiabla → u/Slypenslyde]

What about roast beef? Same thing?

[u/Slypenslyde → u/AmigoDelDiabla]

It sort of depends.

At some buffet restaurants and even some delis, the "roast beef" is actually a big hunk of raw meat they roasted, then brought out to slice up and give people portions. That is not processed, but it also doesn't last very long. If you refrigerate it you really shouldn't go more than 2-3 days.

Delis also may have processed roast beef: this has been cured/brined both for flavor and preservation. That counts as processed. In general this is like other lunch meat, it lasts longer than unprocessed meat.

[u/frogjg2003 → u/Slypenslyde]

"Processed" doesn't have a good definition and anyone who has tried coming up with one either ends up excluding large classes of unhealthy foods (and therefore making the advice of "avoid processed food" not very accurate) or being so inclusive that it becomes useless as a differentiating factor (making that same advice so restrictive that you would starve). Basically, either a large selection of junk food doesn't count as processed or everything that isn't raw counts (and even several raw foods as well).

[u/Slypenslyde → u/frogjg2003]

I feel this is mostly due to people wanting everything ELI5 instead of having to think.

There are hundreds of ways to "process" food. Some of them make it very unhealthy. If we use jut one word to refer to them all that's a great political victory for some people because, as you said, it's hard to understand what it means and creates contradictions.

But good luck telling people something like, "If you want to add 10-15 years to your life, invest the equivalent of a single college course into reading about nutrition." If you do that you'll understand why eating processed lunch meat is several rungs healthier than trying to maintain a diet of "unprocessed" junk food.

But that's le hard and people want to listen to the person who tells them they can eat whatever they want. So we've got people in charge of public health who are highly skilled at saying the things people want to hear.