To think it's impossible to eat a UPF free diet as an ordinary person?

No one said anything about blocking a whole day out cooking. Putting a chicken carcass in a pot with an onion and carrot takes less than 5 minutes. As does the straining. Making bread in a breadmaker takes less than 5 minutes. Making Yorkshire pudding batter for 20 takes on average 2 or 3 minutes longer than making a batter for 6.
batch cooking pasta for lunches takes 15 minutes and lasts 3 days. Eating well does not mean you can’t have friends or family time for goodness sake!

I’ve had two babies and still managed to cook every night. It’s not rocket science. 20 minutes is nothing!

I said that’s not necessary. Eat real food and cook from scratch. I don’t cook anything that requires hours.

YABU, it's not that hard. I guess it depends on the type of food you cook, I don't use stock cubes or sauces or whatnot. But we do eat chocolates etc and those are UPF but I don't cook my own snacks so don't count those.

And the "Big problem" is is that I have a baby (a rather refluxy one) and a 3 year old and simply don't have the luxury or time to be spending 20 minutes preparing and a further 20 minutes cooking each night.

I get annoyed when I see the self righteous and goady posts of people who have the luxury of time and money to be able to do this every day and yet can't understand individual circumstances of why we can't all be making our own bread, stock and god knows what else let alone have the time to be researchin all these products and going to several different supermarkets, butchers, bakeries to purchase these products

I think most people like myself do the best we can. But frankly life is far too short to be worrying about the nutritional components of stock cubes.

I do this anyway. My post was in reference to the entire blocking out of a day a week to spend cooking bread, stock, Yorkshire puddings. That's fine if you want to do that but I'd rather use the shortcuts with the fresh food and spend quality time with my family and get the benefit of fresh air, socialising and activities together then spent chained to my kitchen for an entire day boiling up carcasses and making mountains of bread.

And I have a 3 year old and baby so cooking isn't exactly an enjoyable family experience at the moment! They certainly wouldn't want to be indoors doing it for an entire day!

But you don’t need to spend a day making stuff. Just cook meals with normal, whole ingredients . Last night I made chicken curry with rice. Took me 20 mins to prepare, 20 mins to cook. What’s the big problem? I don’t eat snacks apart from fruit/ cheese/ nuts. I rarely eat bread and if I do it’s a sourdough. I have condiments but I’m not going to freak out about a teaspoon of ketchup or mayo.

It probably is impossible as we've come to rely on items such as stock or ketchup where it's generally impractical to make it all from scratch. However I don't think we need to be concerned about small amounts in our diet. Using upf stock shouldn't mean you can't have a bag of crisps. The issue that we have is that for the average person upfs make up 60% of their diet. So I don't think proportions of 10-20% are anything to worry about.

Why can’t cooking be a family fun thing? We make it family time. It’s wonderful.

But if you work full time, when are you actually getting time to spend with friends and family if one a day a weekend is spent entirely devoted to cooking?

I love cooking and do my best to eat healthy but I think some people are so focused and obsessed with this UPF idea that it's at the exclusion of everything else. Good health isn't about nutrition alone, socialising, spending time together , good mental health are all equally important.

I work full time so my time is limited. I cook homemade as much as I can but I'll use the occasional ready meals and eat supermarket bread and stock cubes and array of other products guilt free.

I'd rather use these products than spend a whole day boiling up bones for stock, endlessly batch cooking and making bread when I could be seeing friends, spending time with my children and family and actually out the house in fresh air having experiences and fresh air.

I'm pretty certain when my children grow up, they aren't going to give a shit where their bread came from or whether I used a stock cube or not but they'll be but that my time was spent with them giving them happy memories and fun times seeing friends and family.

@JTtheee I have often spent time on a Sunday morning doing meal prep/batch cooking. Once you get into the swing of things it doesn’t take too long to do and saves time further down the line, so IMO has been worth giving up a Sunday morning especially in winter when we were less likely to be doing anything much. I am more likely to make soups, and main meals such as chilli, curry, casseroles, stew type meals along with sauces.

My DD approaches things slightly differently and uses a slow cooker (less so in summer). She makes more than is needed for the evening meal and either freezes leftovers or uses them for lunches.

With a little thought and organisation, we both manage to cook from scratch and avoid ready made/UPF.

You don’t need to be a housewife to eat home made. Make Sundays a day of cooking. We’ll have a roast chicken then boil up the carcass for several pots of stock to put in the freezer, make a big pot of pesto (it lasts about 3 weeks in the fridge). Make 20 Yorkshire puds and freeze them. Buy a breadmaker, prep it before bed and wake up to fresh warm bread. Make a heap of flatbreads and freeze them for things like a curry and chilli con carne. I work full time with 2 kids and 2 dogs and still have time to eat mostly home made. Frozen mash is one thing I cheat on but it’s potato, butter and milk so not UPF. It’s taken me a couple of years to get into a rhythm of finding decent cheats and routines but you definitely do not have to be a housewife to avoid ready made!

You're choosing really complicated time consuming things to make. Swap bread for couscous or homemade flat bread. Swap jam for hummus or honey. Swap pie for casserole. If you want eat like a 50s housewife, you either need to be a housewife or buy ready made

Could you make/use a veg stock instead? Keep leftover veg/peelings/stalks including mushrooms and boil them up.

@ChelseaDetective I too love the taste of oats but hate the texture of porridge.

I begun either making granola...but it can be a bit calorie dense for everyday

Or else I just mix porridge oats 'raw' with Greek yogurt, again for lower calories im loving the 0% from Tesco or lidl

Then I add fruit, flax seeds, maybe some flaked almonds and im completely addicted to dried mango chopped up finely (lidl is the nicest imo)

Also if you melt 1 square of very dark chocolate in the bowl for 30 seconds before mixing in everything else - stir it all together with a fork - especially with banana slices, droooool.

In the case of UPF, I try and live as best as can to a low UPF diet. I dont buy anything that is a main ingredient that I couldn't make at home.
Only meat, veg, plain pasta, rice.
I will use stock cubes
I will let DC use tomato sauce but I no longer eat mayo - I'll use greek yogurt or source cream instead
We don't buy ready type meals
We only buy plain cereal. DH and I eat oats, DC has drawn the line at Shreddies, thats ok, there are very few awful ingredients in them

We try and buy sourdough or Jason's bread, but if we can't it we will attempt the next best thing. We've come from only eating white bread so its a great step.

DC eat too much processed ham in sandwiches- every week we say this week we will cook a roast ham and slice it up. One week soon we will do it. But they also now eat cheese and real roast chicken.

Getting slightly better each food shop is the goal.

We always ate well and were not big into "unhealthy food" but really started being vigilant of UPF in summer 2024 and our eating and shopping habits are so much better. DC are aware of what they eat and make good choices away from home which is where its more important imo

If you just buy ingredients and cook food, as opposed to buying food, you will be most of the way there tbh.

if you want perfection (or no upf ever, al all) then you will have to work harder for it.

re stock I make it every time I roast a chicken and freeze it, that’s not difficult. I don’t generally make bread though (but I don’t eat it much either).

Tesco sell some ready made stocks in the fridge section, have a look at those.

Also Jason's ciabattin really isn't bad at all as mass-produced bread goes, one slice is very filling, and it seems to last a week without going stale or mouldy.

I made a lot of really nice ice lollies over the summer. I have the Ice Kitchen lolly recipe book and lolly set. Really took away the Ben and Jerry craving. Will get an ice cream machine eventually.

We eat less meat because it’s better for you and have never eaten a lot. Meat a couple of times a week maybe 3 if we have fish. We’ve really noticed the difference with weekly bills since we’ve cut out processed snacks, ice cream, biscuits etc and have eaten the same amount of meat . I buy organic eggs now as they’re the only ones that are really free range. Even with that and more expensive bread and store cupboard items my bills are cheaper.

Balsamic vinegar isn’t necessarily a staple. I use it for a nice dressing and to drizzle on the odd thing and have a nice bottle that has lasted ages but other than that it’s not something I use a lot. I use red and white wine vinegar and cider vinegar more. All v reasonable.

It looks like balsamic vinegar might actually be one of those products where cheap is frequently UPF free. Traditional high-end product too. So something to look out for for any purists, as you say - interesting! But at the value end of the range it's not such a problem from my observations. Maybe more mid-range.
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My bills have gone up, mainly through buying better quality meat and eggs (I know you said you eat veggie a lot). It's worth it to me though. My local shops dont stock Crosta or Jasons (but I dont eat bread anyway so doesn't matter to me)

But when you cut out processed crap your bills go down so you can more than cover paying a bit more for bread. My bills have gone down a lot. Morrisons, Tesco, Tesco Metro, Booths, Sainsbury’s ….all sell Jasons and Crosta.

Balsamic vinegar, especially cheaper ones, often contains thickeners like modified corn or maize starch, colourings, and sulphites. Yes you can find it UPF free, again it's that time consuming stage at the beginning of finding which products in shops are OK.
I would say it's worth doing that and changing products accordingly, but yes agree it's still possible to source them.
Just takes longer and can be more expensive, which was the OPs point.

No I agree, and I live off those foods stuff too. But the OP's question was whether living UPF free can be done by an 'ordinary person' and the Crosta stuff is a lot more expensive than the usual stuff. It isn't even available in a lot of areas. People can't necessarily go to M&S or Waitrose, and if you're shopping in Asda or Morrisons it's much harder to find UPF free items. It's doable, and worth the effort, but I disagree with your arguments that it's easy and no more expensive.