Processed Food

Now that I have a child in Kindergarten I've become acquainted with "Box Tops for Education." I find it incredibly offensive that we clip coupons for our kids education but our elected officials waste billions on frivolous nonsense, but I digress. These little gems are nearly always attached to boxed foods re: processed food. One morning before school I was having a discussion about processed foods with the mother of a child in Peanut's class. She related how she hardly ever fed her kids processed food. My jaw nearly dropped to the floor since her kid is the Box Top champ of Kindergarten. Granted, he may be getting these from neighbors, grandparents or other relatives. Then the thought occurred to me, what does the term processed food mean to me and to others? Is it like art? I know it when I see it. Is it a looser definition: must have 5 or fewer ingredients? Is it anything in a box? Does it come from a laboratory or a kitchen? A factory or a farm? And more importantly is it EVER okay to eat it?
I think, for us, processed food is a bit of all those things. We do eat food from boxes. Primarily pasta (Barilla Plus), whole grain cereals (Wheaties, Cheerios, etc) and crackers (Triscuits).
We do try to stay away from foods with excessive ingredients. One must use common sense however as Kashi Black Bean Mango frozen entree which I LOVE has over 20 ingredients. The difference? Every ingredient is a real food, not a preservative, flavor enhancer, etc.
Is it foods with a primary (first) ingredient of refined white flour? Maybe, that'd probably be a good place to start. Although, I admit, as a Southern girl, I do love me some biscuits. I don't, however, eat them everyday as I did growing up.
How about this one: anything with greater than 5grams of sugar? That might be a good place to start too since as Americans we are eating 30% more sugar than we did 30 years ago (when I was a kid).
Well, we could debate this for a very long time but I think I'll close with this. If we are eating more real food like meat (preferably locally sourced), fruit from the tree or vine, vegetables from the ground and whole grains like brown rice, quinoa, oats, etc there will be less room in your diet for the other stuff however you define processed food.
Wait, is chocolate processed food?