It's a legitimate point to raise, as page 3 of that report points out:

> Food processing in itself is not the issue. One obvious reason is that nowadays, practically all food is processed in some sense and in some way. The term ‘processing’ (like the term ‘industry’) is very general and therefore not helpful, and so judgements of foods simply because they are ‘processed’ are not meaningful.

"Minimally processed foods are natural foods altered by methods that include removal of inedible or unwanted parts, and also processes that include drying, crushing, grinding, powdering, fractioning, filtering, roasting, boiling, non-alcoholic fermentation, pasteurization, chilling, freezing, placing in containers, and vacuum packaging. The distinction between unprocessed and minimally processed foods is not especially significant. "

Interesting actually to see fractionation on that list... At least with distillation and like process it feels it should be solidly in processed food category.

> normally starts with whole ingredients rather than extracts

But the extracts come from whole ingredients, so if you think about where the extracts came from then the whole process is again using whole ingredients.

Yes, and technically, fries are vegetables.

Fries aren't unhealthy because they are cut. They are unhealthy because they are completely covered in oil.