"Processing" is not the issue. Food seeing the inside of a factory is not what will make you sick. It's what gets put in it. It's the sugar.
I'm pretty sure at this point that the word "processed food" was also a stroke of marketing genius by the shit suggary food lobby. Avoids putting front and center what is it that makes the food bad (it's the sugar), and replace it with a generic scary-sounding word that can be applied to everything, so it diffuses responsibility and hides the actual problem ("See, this shit food uses unprocessed brown cane sugar as its addiction additive. Healthy!")
I'm pretty sure at this point that the word "processed food" was also a stroke of marketing genius by the shit suggary food lobby. Avoids putting front and center what is it that makes the food bad (it's the sugar), and replace it with a generic scary-sounding word that can be applied to everything, so it diffuses responsibility and hides the actual problem ("See, this shit food uses unprocessed brown cane sugar as its addiction additive. Healthy!")