So I've heard meat eaters say that they don't want processed meats, as a way of excluding vegan meat products that resemble processed meats, such as Tofurkey deli slices, veggie dogs, soy crumbles, etc. They would prefer a more pure meat, such as fried chicken, or a turkey carcass on their table. Well, let's consider what meat means to be processed.
The flesh of animals will quickly rot and decay on store shelves, so to extend shelf life, the bodies are processed with preservatives and chemicals which make it look, smell, or taste fresh. Processed meats have been linked to increasing rate of cancers on top of the normal cancerous properties of cooking meat. I can see why anyone would want to avoid these.
On the other hand, when vegetables are processed into products that resemble processed meats, they have little need for the harsh chemicals to prevent the rotting that animal flesh goes through. A little salt is often enough.
When animals are not processed in a factory, they are not considered processed meats, such as a Thanksgiving turkey. But to call this 'unprocessed' would be ignoring a large part of what brought that animal to the table. That is, the birth, growth, and life of the turkey before it was killed. The turkey had all sorts of bodily processes going on, respiration, digestion, immune systems, learning, mating. These processes are a magnitude greater in complexity than the processes that a plant goes through to produce vegetables.
Most importantly, the plant is producing vegetables for the mutualistic purpose of feeding animals, so they can spread the seeds. Plants grow delicious and nutritious vegetables intentionally! When a human consumes an animal, the bodily processes must be stopped, by killing, and it must go through further processing by fire in order to make it "safe" to eat.
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