Avoiding UPFs at breakfast

greek yogurt
hard boiled eggs

soaked oats - there are some great recipes to be found, peanut butter and banana, with dates for banoffe, cinnamon and apple for apple tart overnight oats

I get accused of having a tin helmet but the ‘food industry’ isn’t just Kraft and Heinz; it’s meat and dairy producers as well. These are huge industries which lobby hard.

I find it very convenient that they’re now on the side of health. Quite a turnaround from just a few short years ago when it looked like oat and soya milk were about to take over and red meat was evil.

Or if you're feeling fancy - smoosh handful of raspberries in a cup, one tablespoon of oats, one teaspoon of chia seeds, a bit of honey or maple syrup to taste, then fill with 50:50 natural yoghurt and milk. Stir then cover and put in fridge.

Weetabix
porridge
eggs
ftuit & yogurt

We have porridge. Or pancakes (home made, scratch, no packet mix). If we’re short on time, eggs! Toddler loves scrambled egg or coddled egg.

Cornflakes or shredded wheat aren't upf. 9 yr old could slice a banana in.

Or bake a batch of muffins (many recipes don't contain added sugar)? Store in freezer and get 2 out before you go to bed.

If you like baking maybe breakfast muffins? Lots of recipes for savoury ones online, here’s an example: https://www.dinneratthezoo.com/breakfast-egg-muffins/

Obviously you could also do sweet ones like blueberry muffins. Banana bread might also be better than pastries, either a loaf sliced or you could bake banana bread cupcakes.

What do they eat for lunches and dinners? I don't understand the obsession with certain foods being limited to particular mealtimes. If they like a chicken drumstick with cheese and grapes, leave them that for breakfast.

Just don't buy it in. The only cereal I buy are original Weetabix original shredded wheat and all bran. Mine are healthy eaters though both have autism. All bran is lovely with plain Greek yoghurt. Just have to put the all bran and yogurt in a bowl and mix. Overnight oats as well. Better if you mix the oats with the yoghurt. I mix some chia seeds in put some frozen fruit on top lovely.

Overnight oats, homemade muffins, smoothies made the night before, yoghurt and fruit, hard boiled eggs.

Most doctors and scientists would argue you’re wrong. Ultra processed foods contain toxins that contribute towards obesity, associated illnesses and cancer. Avoiding UPFs where you can is absolutely the right thing to do for future health.

Mine help themselves to greek yoghurt, bananas and milk if they're up early.

Toast/bread (get a toaster, they're not expensive) plus peanut butter/honey/jam/cheese.
Drink of milk or small glass of orange juice.
Fruit (fresh or dried or tinned).
Plain greek yogurt with berries simmered with maple syrup (you could do the simmering the night before) or with honey.
Cold Spanish omelette.
Homemade muffins.

I think there is some evidence that highly processed food can be harmful, but it does seem rather like the fashionable food fad of the moment.

We've been here before with the 'E for Additives' phase a few decades ago. Definitely a class element there too.

But this thread is quite balanced as far as UPFs go, there haven’t been any obsessive comments. The reality is UPFs are unhealthy/bad for you and there is no way of sugar coating it. Someone confusing a processed food for UPF doesn’t change the fact that the actual UPF is unhealthy

Answered before realising there'd been so many posts, so have deleted. (you can still read it if you must)

Got to say the clash of looking for options to exclude stuff from your kids diet, with not wanting to get up and make them something, with feeding them two breckfasts is an interesting one.

Just give them cereal and be done with it Op, life's too short for this level of stress

Some people definitely demonise perfectly fine foods- I'm on a Facebook group where every couple of days someone says "don't use greek style yogurt, it's full of added sugar" which is total bollocks - some greek style yogurt might be made with added sugar, but "greek style" simply means made outside of Greece given it's a protected a title! I make "greek style yogurt" in my yogurt maker - I don't add sugar, I just strain my yogurt so it's greek style.

I've not seen that. And I've not seen it on this thread so I'm not sure why it's come up as an argument. I wonder if those people were American? Wouldn't surprise me if their Greek style yogurt was in fact laden with sugar.

My kids love getting to sit and watch tv in the mornings on the weekend while I stay in bed! Really can't see a problem with this

But I completely agree some people get obsessive about it, and it is something that people with ED have to be very careful with. But no one here sounds aggressively radical, and yet are being spoken to like they're being obsessive.

That's reminded me of one I used to make and need to do again!
Banana, hot milk, oats, peanut butter, cinnamon and a bit of honey all blended
Nice with a spoon of horlicks too

@soupfiend I don't see what you see, I've not seen anyone say "yogurts are bad", this thread alone shows how people are trying to steer op to the healthier options of categories of food, like homemade bread. I've been on a lot of these threads and I just see a lot of angry women who don't want to be told an inconvenient truth, switching to organic baked beans is just one small change I've been able to make to reduce our overall consumption of artificial ingredients, on its own it's a small change but it's part of a bigger change I feel the current science is showing will be beneficial to my family. With the majority of UK children having a diet of 80% UPFs and we are seeing a dramatic rise in diet related health issues, there is a problem, why are you trying to downplay it?

I'm very much the same in that I don't demonise food groups, sugar, salt and fat are not dirty words in my house, but the science around ultra processing has completely reshaped the way I looked at industrially produced food. It's not banned in my house, but I am heavily moderating it now.