Taking this further, cooking IS processing food, nuts (ie. cashews) require curing before eating else being poisonous.
Where [i]should[/i] one stop with this idea?
I don’t think it’s a very big leap from mortadella (circa 14th century) or bologna sausage (some centuries later) to vienna sausages. Abundant fresh meat and vegetables are a very recent development thanks to refrigerated transportation. The poor and middle class only ate fresh food during harvest time, most of the rest was either dry or processed.
The harnessing of fire made humans the universal predator, that could denature poison and kill bacteria. Salt and Acid as preservatives fall into similar categories. This is processing that has been around as long as or longer than modern humans. Human's wouldn't be humans without fire, salt, and acid.
Conversely, pea protein isolate, spun into meat with 30 other isolated substances isnt really "food" in any historical or traditional sense.
Somewhere in-between lies things like fermentation. It's up to you to draw a line somewhere, or forget about lines and eat anything.
Starts off by digging back 90 years to pick an example that just barely applies and treating it as if it were a normal thing. Then disparages a fairly rare option while condescending about the recongizeability of foods available now.
All of this while deftly ignoring the original point of the comment it's responding to to dispute its validity without addressing it.
The variability of food over the last century has no bearing on whether you should eat foods you recognize or the adviseability of eating the type of 'food' described in the article.
Spam was introduced in 1937 and three years later 70% of urban Americans were eating it. Around 100 million pounds of Spam were shipped to troops during World War II. That’s according to Hormel Foods, the manufacturer.
If that’s what you consider “fairly rare” we’re speaking different languages.