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

I am all about organic and cooking from scratch, but I also have this feeling that the UPF horror is to serve failed doctors selling books.

Well I say we don't know. We're starting to learn, and it's frightening, albeit inconvenient.

Exactly. Health issues across the board are rising. The amount of people in their 30s with all sorts issues is really eye opening - and of course the argument can be made that people are just more willing to talk about it now, that's probably a part of it. But it's not the whole picture.

And like you say, people know it. It is capitalism at its very finest. Those energy drinks that were popular a few years back, Prime was it? Parents queuing to pick them up for their kids. My youngest had a dairy allergy and I remember vividly the HV trying to get me to go and spend a fortune on some branded dairy free cheese puff shite, because she'd seen them on social media. Pure processed shite for a six month old.

This is probably the single most sensible post I have ever seen on here about UPF

It doesn't sound nice to say, and I get why people don't like to hear it but it's true. And the extra weight is only what we can see;

Precisely. UPFs have only been widely available in the huge numbers they are now since my generation, 80s/90s, we don't yet know the long term impacts of being raised on these foods in high numbers. But we do know that certain cancers and digestive issues are rising rapidly and that life expectancy is starting to reduce. We know obesity is increasing. Of course it is nuanced and it won't all be down to UPF but it's a heck of a correlation. We also know that powerful people are making vast sums of money on this lifestyle and they will do everything in their power to slow down the revelation. We live in a capitalist society. Money trumps all. It sounds conspiratorial but it's damn well realistic and we all know it.

As a newish mother, I see this too but also from the perspective of beating ourselves up because of what we occasionally feed our DC. In baby groups, there is a huge amount of discussion about what my toddler and her peers eat and ‘UPF’ is mentioned in every single conversation practically. I often get asked what she’s eating and what is in it. I always believed moderation is key and a little of everything (within reason of course) is fine and a balanced approach is best for future healthy attitudes around food. But my little one has friends who are vegetarian, for instance, and I sometimes wonder if I really should be giving her some of our rotisserie chicken or other processed things such as bread. So yes, her food is often another source of feeling inadequate! 😂

It is, and it shocks me how defensiveness is preventing people from seeing it.

In my child's school, at least a quarter of his class is overweight; or what would have been considered fat back when I was in school in the 90s. Back then there was usually one or two overweight kids and it was a shock because it was a rare sight. Now it's the norm.

It doesn't sound nice to say, and I get why people don't like to hear it but it's true. And the extra weight is only what we can see; what's going on inside won't be much better. But we're a nation that's getting bigger and bigger, and it's becoming more acceptable now.

"My kids only have McDonalds twice a week. They had chicken nuggets for tea, but they had a fruit yoghurt and a diet fizzy drink after. They had PE today so they had crisps when I met them at the school gate."

It's all stuff I hear regularly, and I'm sorry but it's one thing to make excuses for one's self as an adult, but it's unfair to do that to kids too.

It's not education that's needed. It's regulation. The fact the traffic light system allows green all over a can of diet coke is ludicrous.

I think it's already well known that many people on low incomes have to rely on cheap UPF due to a lack of cooking facilities and the costs of 'raw cooking' due to fuel prices.

It's not because they're actually stupid or need educating.

@TeaforTheWins sure, but that's not the authority on UPF research, nor indeed directly related. There's a lot of interesting stuff in Zoe around gut biome that I think we could learn a lot from, the lack of fibre in our diets for one thing, but I completely agree it's another capitalist venture.

I've been reading up on UPF and reduced my UPF months ago, I've not needed to go near Zoe, only reason I know anything about it because my mum did it. I've not spent a penny on any diet fads. I bought the book, and if anything my shop consists of much fewer brands now because I am buying more raw ingredients.

This is a public health issue.

Oh, and these men really are making a fortune out of this new diet.

What diet exactly?

Would a more balanced view of what we eat be more helpful?

Absolutely. Have you seen anyone saying UPF should be banned entirely? Because most of the articles and concern raised has been around the volume of UPF, not the mere existence of it. It's been identified a huge number of children have a diet consisting of 80%+ of UPF. That's what we need to start looking at first. Not shaming people for ketchup, but too many people are far more keen to get butt hurt at what they deem to be personal criticism of their own diet rather than looking at the frightening national trends.

UPF makes you feel more hungry so you eat more. That’s been proven.

At the end of 2018, Hall and his colleagues became the first scientists to test – in randomised controlled conditions – whether diets high in ultra-processed foods could actually cause overeating and weight gain.
For four weeks, 10 men and 10 women agreed to be confined to a clinic under Hall’s care and agreed to eat only what they were given, wearing loose clothes so that they would not notice so much if their weight changed. This might sound like a small study, but carefully controlled trials like this are considered the gold standard for science, and are especially rare in the field of nutrition because of the difficulty and expense of persuading humans to live and eat in laboratory conditions. Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina, has praised Hall’s study – published in Cell Metabolism – for being “as good a clinical trial as you can get”.

It turned out that, during the weeks of the ultra-processed diet, the volunteers ate an extra 500 calories a day, equivalent to a whole quarter pounder with cheese. Blood tests showed that the hormones in the body responsible for hunger remained elevated on the ultra-processed diet compared to the unprocessed diet

Hall’s study provided evidence that an ultra-processed diet – with its soft textures and strong flavours – really does cause over-eating and weight gain, regardless of the sugar content. Over just two weeks, the subjects gained an average of 1kg. This is a far more dramatic result than you would expect to see over such a short space of time (especially since the volunteers rated both types of food as equally pleasant)

It's not so much that all ultra processed foods are unhealthy. But nearly all unhealthy foods are ultra processed. From the article linked above:

/That includes almost all “ready-to-eat” foods, packaged snacks and sweets, instant foods, fizzy drinks, and breakfast cereals, as well as sausages, chicken nuggets, and burgers./

If you avoid UPFs you will cut out all that fattening junk at a stroke.

To compare a diet of normal healthy home cooked food to an eating disorder is really sad.

Oh, and these men really are making a fortune out of this new diet.

You know who makes a fortune out of food? The companies making and selling us UPF.

You don’t need anything other than internet access to cut out UPF

@Putmeinsummer ok, can you link me articles or other evidence discrediting the negatives impacts of UPF? Ones that haven't been written by scientists funded by Coca Cola or similar.

Looking for 'for' or 'against' an entire book is pretty simplistic when it comes to academic research.

But they weren't suggesting cutting it out entirely, but reducing it to 20% (which at a fifth is a generous allocation)

I personally think it's great that this is being brought to light, and encouraging us to look at labels more. The more we do this, the more supermarkets will remove unnecessary chemicals and make better value UPF free versions. I'm noticing it already.

For example, peanut butter - a couple of years ago the only option for UPF free peanut butter were the expensive 'health food' brands like pip etc, but because more people started buying it, now Sainsburys and Tesco both have own brand versions of 100% peanut butter which is much cheaper.

In 2014, the Brazilian government took the radical step of advising its citizens to avoid UPFs outright. The country was acting out of a sense of urgency, because the number of young Brazilian adults with obesity had risen so far and so fast, more than doubling between 2002 and 2013 (from 7.5% of the population to 17.5%). These radical new guidelines urged Brazilians to avoid snacking, and to make time for wholesome food in their lives, to eat regular meals in company when possible, to learn how to cook and to teach children to be “wary of all forms of food advertising”.
The biggest departure in the Brazilian guidelines was to treat food processing as the single most important issue in public health. This new set of rules framed unhealthy food less in terms of the nutrients it contains (fats, carbohydrates etc) and more by the degree to which it is processed (preserved, emulsified, sweetened etc). No government diet guidelines had ever categorised foods this way before. One of the first rules in the Brazilian guidelines was to “avoid consumption of ultra-processed products”. They condemned at a stroke not just fast foods or sugary snacks, but also many foods which have been reformulated to seem health-giving, from “lite” margarines to vitamin-fortified breakfast cereals.

I don’t think it’s a fad. I think it’s honesty about how bad our diets have become in the last 40 year and what happens to our bodies when the majority of our food is heavily processed.

Brazil was ahead on this.
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/feb/13/how-ultra-processed-food-took-over-your-shopping-basket-brazil-carlos-monteiro

When you add sugar, salt or fat in your kitchen you’re aware of how much is going into your body. You know that cookies have sugar and fried chicken is high in fat. When your breakfast is a ‘healthy’ cereal you’re often eating added sugar. When your use a vegetable pasta sauce the added sugar and salt is often high but you still think you’re making a healthy choice. All the crap marketed as healthy snacks for small children because it ‘comes from fruit’ even though it’s so highly processed that their bodies don’t react to it the same way.

Companies are making millions by selling us food that doesn’t keep us full and keeps us snacking and our blood sugar yo-yoing.

But its not, because its not cutting out any food groups whatsoever. Nobody is telling you you can't eat meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, dairy, starches. Its literally just recommending you don't do much to it?
Its not even that hard or time consuming.... Buy a raw chicken, and roast it, you can add potatoes and vegetables into the same tray to roast in the fat of the chicken.... Nothing processed. Whats restrictive about that