Hey Teejay,

Whole foods include many types of meat, potatoes, butter, fruits, vegetables, certain whole grains, and nuts (without added vegetable oil).

If you look at the ingredients list and it's more than one thing, you're looking at a processed food. If there is no ingredients list (like, say, an apple), you're usually looking at a whole food.

The only practical exceptions to this rule are white pasta (which is made up of one processed ingredient--white flour--and is thus a processed food) and most dairy products (which have more than one ingredient, none of which are fattening [with the exceptions of sugar-added yogurt and chocolate milk]. Modern dairy products are technically 'processed' but are basically healthy for people without lactose intolerance, and should be counted as 'whole foods').

Home cooking is almost always better than eating at a restaurant, but is almost meaningless by itself. For example, you'd be better off eating steak at a restaurant than cooking up a big batch of white flour noodles at home and smothering it with home-cooked tomato-and-sugar sauce (also known as 'pasta').

The ingredients list is more important than whether you cooked the food at home.

Best,
Dan