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

Just use loads of herbs & spices instead of stock cubes.
Sprinkle oregano &/or smoked paprika on a grilling sausage.
For gravy add basil into a load of frying onions + garlic, when golden pour on hot (from kettle) water when boiling add dessert spoon cornflour dissolved in 2 dspn cold water.

Its not that difficult if you batch cook from scratch most of the time. I make my own stock in the slow cooker after a roast and like a pp save veg ends etc to add to the stockpot. I chuck a load of veg and stock in the soup maker first thing and then just turn it on 20 minutes before I want lunch and it cooks it all for me. Left overs go in the fridge to microwave the next day.

If I'm doing a roast I'll make extra potatoes and mash and freeze them. Next day will be a risotto or curry using the left over meat. When I want a quick meal I can grab a box of bolognese sauce and a box of mash from the freezer and assemble a cottage pie in 5 minutes.

It's not an all-or-nothing situation. You're seriously overthinking this.

I love Freya broth, but at £7 a carton its not an everyday ingredient for me!

Again, who says? ‘Of course it should’ is not an answer.

And again, it can be cheap and easy, just make cheaper, easier choices. Cook vegetables and good quality protein, buy wholegrain bread and pasta or choose not to eat bread and pasta if they upset you.

Buy fermented foods or make your own. Saurkraut is chopped cabbage and salt squashed into a jar and left for two weeks. Kimchi is the same with Korean chilli flakes. An omelette. A bowl of soup made by pouring hot water onto a spoonful of Miso with a handful of broccoli tips and accompanied by brown rice, a seared salmon steak and cherry tomatoes.

An apple and a bowl of natural yoghurt is a cheap and easy breakfast or snack.

If you don’t like the foods I’ve described that’s fine. I don’t know what you like. You certainly can’t suffer food you don’t like or spend time you don’t have making bread you don’t need in the name of ‘healthy eating’.

I just try for good enough. I do think it's really hard to avoid upf all together.

I think the bigger companies and cooperations could be doing more to take on the responsibility rather than it all be on the individual consumer.

Some responsibility ofcourse. But I can get cheaper food that all my children will eat that is all upf versus some food that takes up more time to make and money to store/buy (extra freezer perhaps for batch cooking ) that my children won't eat. it's no wonder its a real struggle.

We grow lots of food (time and space privilege there) that helps balance out the occasional chicken dipper my children have. But with additional needs in the mix as well I have to pick my battles.

Hahaha - I can relate. I’ve cleaned up what I eat so much after a cancer diagnosis but I’ll be damned if I’m getting through the first day of my period without a family sized bar of dairy milk.

I try and make sure what I’m eating is really nutrient dense 80% of the time so I don’t need to sweat the other 20!

We rarely eat UPF at home having slowly replaced stuff over the years. I don't stress over it, if I feel like something totally processed I'll have it (can't get through PMT without a cornetto for some reason!). But I WFH and spend a lot of time cooking. I think the hardest/most expensive thing has been bread. We buy Jason's and it's £££ since the kids go through it like termites.

You could just buy a sourdough loaf if you prefer it?
I make normal bread in a breadmaker so it just takes a few minutes to put the ingredients in.

I had a Covent Garden soup and Jason's bread rolls for lunch today, shop bought but the ingredients were ok.

I dont agree with you at all

But equally I dont agree with this UPF obsession.

You can certainly easily and cheaply avoid anything that you consider/is considered UPF. Its not hard.

You dont really need to though.

Why ‘should’ it be? It can be, certainly, but some people enjoying taking a lot of time and effort cooking.

Why can’t you have crisps? Choose the ones that are just potatoes and salt. Vegetable soup takes minutes and is cheap and easy if that’s your preference. Roast a chicken and boil the carcass and veg scraps while you’re eating your dinner.

You can make it easier for yourself if that’s your priority. And you can definitely make sourdough in a bread maker.

Is sourdough in fact better for you? I think it tastes better but surely it's just a different way of getting yeast to ferment? It's still flour and yeast and salt.

Why do you believe the people who say sourdough is better for you than any other home-made bread? You have been suckered by the health buzzword de jour.

If you start off this gullible then you may as well eat anything, as you will never actually know any better.

Why? Bread making isn’t easy, it’s a ballache. That’s why people generally buy it. If you can’t be arsed making bread, and don’t want to eat shop bought, eat something else instead. I don’t eat bread at all. I’m coeliac, and I don’t eat gluten free alternatives because they’re full of shit (and mostly horrible). I haven’t starved to death, and I still eat a full, varied diet.

How expensive should it be to eat real food?

I understand that.

Buy a pouch of beef stock if you want real food.

But a stock cube is clearly a "food product", not actual food, a manufactured UPF. Why would this be a surprise?

You’re wildly over complicating it. As others have said, just look to make simple swaps that are going to be sustainable for you (found at your local supermarkets, things you enjoy, etc etc) and stop striving for perfection or you’ll last about 5 mins with this.

Who said it should be cheap and easy?

You sound overwhelmed by all this, I’ve been there with ‘healthy eating’ before and the scary, inflexible information you get bombarded with is far from healthy.

Some processed food and even a few UPFs (like miso, dark chocolate) are not going to kill you. Just make easy better choices.

So - Instead of worrrying about home made sourdough bread to the point that you’re on here getting frustred and upset try making a vegetable filled omelette with a side salad, olive oil and vinegar and buy good quality wholegrain sourdough bread - supermarkets carry these - which may or may not have a small amount of preservative in it and learn to call it good enough.

What you put in your mouth is a deeply, deeply personal thing and nobody can tell you exactly what is right for your body or your lifestyle.

Ordinary Western diet, maybe. Easy with Eastern diets.

Then accept that you are going to spend 6 hours making it, although afaik most of the time is spent waiting for it to prove or bake which is time you can spend doing other things.

Not at all. Just eat more fresh foods and less food out of brightly coloured packaging. It's really not that hard.

But you are making this harder for yourself than it needs to be. Just make simpler, cheaper choices.