AIBU to think that the anti UPF books and diets around at the moment are just a new version of Clean Eating?

When I was skint, the cheapest meal I found to cook was homemade dhal and chapatis (the latter literally just flour and oil).

(Which also had the bonus of being easy, filling, and really really tasty)

Stew all week😕

Aye, and I mean another thing – why make the comparison (B) a recreation of the chicken nuggets? ((Who in the history of forever has ever bothered making homemade chicken nuggets??))

Far easier and a better comparison would be a big stew / dhal / whatev that could be batch cooked with minimal supervision (just leave on the hob to cook) then frozen and eaten all week.

A lot of those skills around selecting ingredients and preparing them to make low cost, nutritious meals are taught and - sadly - not everyone is taught. It's a complex issue with lots of different factors playing into it - time, cost, access to ingredients/shops (e.g., over a million people in the UK live in food deserts), lack of education, lack of motivation with factors like mental health coming into play. There isn't one straight-forward fix.

I think good places to start would be proper food tech taught in schools that focuses on 'real life' cooking, including meal planning, budgeting, looking up recipes, shopping for ingredients, etc. Better food regulations with more transparency around ingredients and their purpose would help too.

I don't eat this kind of food, I guess. I don't eat nuggets or chips or readymeals, never have. Vegetables and pulses are relatively cheap.

But I don't come from an affluent family or high socio-economic group. I just come from an immigrant family which didn't know any other way of eating. I guess there is some privilege in food knowledge, but this is something that can be easily looked up these days on the internet. I do work full time and so did my mum. I don't really like cooking, but I dislike UPF crap even more.

Anyway, we have had this discussion many times before, and if people don't want to reduce UPFs because they think it's a posh Western fad, that's fine. I don't agree though.

I think perhaps there is some value in at least reducing UPF, so better white bread than chicken nuggets at least.

YANBU.

We all know what a broadly healthy diet looks like.

What troubles me about the UPF trend is the posts on there shouting "UPF" as if that was one single ingredient with one scientifically proven mechanism of harm. Like smoking. It isn't though, it's a huge array of things that will cause varying degrees of harm, including some that won't do much wrong at all.

By all means aim to eat a healthier, less processed diet, but I'm very sceptical about an umbrella term applied to such a variety of foods.

meh, if it’s less healthy than less processed food, it is what it is. You’re free to eat what you want OP, no one’s going to prize your yoghurt out your hand.

It’s obvious that a factory-made yoghurt with sugar/sweeteners, flavourings, etc. is going to be less tasty and less healthy than plain greek yoghurt with your own fruit added to it.

It’s not a conspiracy to make you feel bad.

I agree. He labours the point that it’s far more expensive to eat fresh ingredients and it really shouldn’t be.

I can remember back in the 70s and 80s my dad used to smoke in the car with us children in it, he wouldn’t even let us put the window down. When we’d complain he’d tell us that his parents smoked around him and it never did him any harm. It’s horrific by today’s standards. I’m sure we’ll look back in horror one day at we were fed, or indeed fed our children.

There are theories which link gut dysbiosis to neurodivergence. We’re seeing an explosion in bowel cancer among very young people (20s and 30s), and of course huge increases in diabetes and obesity. We need to make changes. I really fear for my young adult children who live on takeaways and beige freezer shit (despite knowing how to cook).

Of course that doesn’t mean excluding all UPFs, but we can make fairly easy changes to try to lower them. Getting touchy and seeing it as criticism isn’t going to solve the problem. Loads of us are addicted to it, so are bound to react defensively. But it’s not difficult to buy a bag of frozen veg and have that as a side, instead of something highly processed, even if you are a working mother.

Can people give ideas for 30 minutes meals. Because my washing, peeling chopping even a stir fry takes at least 30 minutes.
I can’t even make homemade wedges and fried eggs in 30 minutes. Especially not allotment potatoes that need need careful checking for passengers.

It’s the planning and preparation, especially for those who walk or take public transport. For those who don’t have a freezer or fridge or oven (or other time saving device) it adds on an extra challenge. Having the time means also having energy and motivation. Being stressed and depressed already doesn’t help anyone feel like they can make changes (which may actually be small). It’s also about not having the budget to accommodate failure. What if the family doesn’t like the meal? What if you get it wrong? What if you’ve never learnt to cook? Even simple things. I agree it can be easier than we think but I also understand why people think it will be a hassle and time consuming. I was one of them :)

Yes. Lots of inexpensive ones also. But people don't want to hear it because it is easier to claim that reducing UPF is for the rich or those with eating disorders or those with unlimited time.
Also, nobody needs to buy artisanal chocolate to replace your Kit-Kats or sourdough bread to replace your ordinary bread. Just don't eat a Kit-Kat or white bread daily; they aren't essential. There are other things you can eat.

Yeah but some people hate cooking. Who cba cooking from scratch every day after a full day at work and out of the house from 8-6?

Isnt this why convenience food was invented? Maybe we should look at creating healthier convenience food than piling more pressure on working people.

It does take money though.

For example;

A) a bag of 38 chicken nuggets (600g) can be had for £3 and will last around 9 meals on the presumption of 3-4 nuggets at a time. Oven chips are £1.40 for a 900g bag, again approx 9 meals based on a 100g serving. Frozen peas are £1.20 for a 900g bag, assuming 90g a serving that's also around 9 meals. One meal of nuggets, chips and peas would cost around 62p.

B) a 600g pack of chicken breasts is £4.25, 900g of potatoes is roughly 80p, a bag of plain breadcrumbs with no added "UPF" ingredients is £1.50, and again peas are £1.20 for a 900g bag. Dividing it into nine meals is 88p a serving and that's not taking into account things like the cost of the egg to dip the chicken in before breadcrumbing it or the additional cooking time (as well as the additional preparation time).

If you are on a very limited food budget (and likely pushed for both time and fuel costs too) and you know 100% that your child will eat A, that it fits into your time, and that you can pick it up at your local shop then you're far more likely to buy and cook A.

Being choosy about what you eat based on a set of arbitrary "good" vs "bad" attributes is a privilege that is generally more easily accessible to those in more affluent circumstances or higher socio-economic groups who have access to the required foods, the means to pay for them and the knowledge/education required to know how to cook them (or to look up such information).

But it doesn't need to take a long time to cook. There are plenty of meals that can be made from scratch in half an hour. Hardly anybody is going to be so very strapped for time that they absolutely must just heat ready-meals.

I also can’t help but feel we shouldn’t hide our heads in the sand every time we learn something new. We are humans and the day we stop learning would be a sad one. What one chooses to do with the Information is another thing.

Perhaps this is just another reason the birth rate is going down. Intelligent people who are not well off know it takes time and money to keep a healthy family yet so much they need to accomplish this is unattainable; stable job which allows for a life, stable accommodation whether rented or being able to own, a partner willing to contribute fully to the raising, rearing and providing to of children. Why should they feel they should do as their mothers have always done? Maybe as a society we should recognise the time it takes to make healthy meals for a family?

I think Chris Van Tulken is really careful not to lay blame on women or those who can't afford non upf stuff.

I came to the opposite conclusion. I find most of these people are really compassionate, they lay blame at the structure of our society, capitalism and the food industry. I feel empowered reading the books to do the best I can. And I’ve felt healthier cutting out some stuff with additives that I’d never guessed were bad.

Non Western places often have different lifestyles though. So there may well be someone around who has time to cook. Unlike rushed Western lifestyles.

No I don't think it's the same, as 'clean' eating often involves removing entire food groups like dairy, and often involves exclusion such as gluten (with no good reason!). I understand UPF free foods as foods that are minimally processed. For example, I have started baking a fair bit now and again for the family (banana bread etc) to try and replace some of our processed snacks. Banana bread wouldn't be seen as 'clean' due to sugar content etc, but it's much less ultra processed than a shop bought snack.

I disagree that UPF is a fad for rich people. I dont eat a British diet, so I grew up low UPF. Most people from non Western cultures eat that way. Its not a fad for us. Much of what Tim Spector says we have been doing all our lives.

It doesn't take money and it doesn't always take time.

It would have been the same with home made cakes though.

Yes this!

My Dg died 20 years ago age 86. She’s been addicted to M and S chunky chicken since about the age of 45. UPF didn’t seem to harm her.

Back in January, the majority of what I ate was processed to some degree: ready meals (only cooked from fresh a couple of times a month) with some fresh veg added if you’re lucky, and an awful lot of snack foods, cakes and chocolate.

Since then I have progressively changed towards unprocessed and minimally processed food, and reduced the amount of carbs I’m eating. The processed/unprocessed ratio has probably flipped from 80/20 to 10/90.

And my appetite is transformed, from being constantly hungry to being able to comfortably practise time restricted eating and intermittent fasting. I don’t snack or graze - I just eat meals. With rare exceptions, I eat a maximum of two meals a day. WITHOUT feeling hungry the vast majority of the time, which I always used to, even though I was eating larger quantities and more often. And everything I eat is utterly delicious - but not compulsive, like a lot of UPFs are.

Now, how much of the difference in my appetite is down to eating less UPF’s and how much is down to the carbs, I don’t know. Some people point the finger at processed carbs and seed oils driving unnatural hunger, others emphasise insulin (so it’s all about the carbs).

But I do know that I am a heck of a lot healthier and happier eating like this. I’ve lost over 4 stone and got off all my diabetes medications. I’m not UPF free - life’s too short for that. But life will be (I’m convinced) longer, and much more enjoyable on a low UPF diet.

I read the Chris Van Tulleken book. He keeps saying he wasn't recommending a completely UPF free lifestyle but then he went on about the benefits of not eating UPF! I still found it interesting though.

The issue is, UPF is cheap and accessible and easy. If you're an exhausted parent on a low income, what are you going to do? The conditions that we live in and work in have created the necessity for convenience foods.

I do kind of agree with you in that it's just another thing working mothers are now made to feel guilty about.

I've not read or watched anything about it in any particular depth but the hype around it did cause me to rethink some of the 'quick' stuff we got but as a family with a restricted menu to accommodate coeliac disease we didn't eat a huge amount of fast food or ultra processed stuff anyway due to wheat being a common cheap ingredient in them.

ultimately though I don't think it is actually that hard to cut most of the worst stuff out with not much effort, it's cost that's the problem. You can buy good quality bread next to the cheap sliced stuff in supermarkets.