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

I'm not sure you fully understand what UPFs are. You can be making all your meals 'from scratch' i.e. not ready meals or takeaways, but still eating lots of UPF.

If you eat pretty much any cereal apart from porridge oats or weetabix, any yoghurt apart from completely plain, Philadelphia soft cheese, any 'healthy' snack bars, cooking oil spray, stock cubes as OP said, most baked beans, any baked goods such as fresh croissants or wholemeal wraps, jams, chutneys, condiments like chilli sauce or balsamic vinegar, you're eating UPFs. It's way beyond looking up recipes.

Our food system is so commercialised that it's utterly pervasive, and it is difficult, time-consuming, and sometimes expensive to avoid them.

I understand the point of the whole UPF free thing, but some people do take it to the extreme. In my view, if you're mostly cooking your own meals (even if that includes things like stock cubes, gravy granules and the occasional jar or packet of ready made sauce), then you're probably not gonna be that unhealthy. Life's stressful enough half the time, you gotta choose your battles, and for me that means not fannying about making every little thing from scratch.

And sometimes we just need a little treat to look forward to, or cheer us up after a long week! For example, last night after a very healthy homemade Sunday lunch, I ate half a shop bought family sized trifle for my dinner, and I have zero regrets 😂

I make my own bread using flour, yeast, salt, a little honey. It doesn't take all that long and you can do other things in the rising stages. Why does it have to be sourdough?

Tbf, it is more effort than sticking some oven chips and frozen battered fish in the oven. It's just not a lot of effort and doesn't take a lot of time. And isn't impossible.

Tbh, the people I don't understand are the ones who wil make a bolognese or something with meat and onions but use a jarred sauce instead of passata and herbs. That one really doesn't make any sense at all. It's as quick to open a jar of passata as it is to open a jar of dolmio.

Absolute nonsense. It's no better and will have processed ingredients. Once you get in the groove it's no hassle and the better you eat the more energy you have.

Or buy Jason. The amount of money you save from buying crap and over priced convenience foods is massive.

It is not hard or time consuming or expensive. No you don’t have to put more effort in either you simply use recipes that are quick and easy like we all have to do when we work full time.Everybody can do it and to say otherwise is a complete cop out. If you don’t want to do it or can’t be bothered then that’s entirely your choice but don’t blame that on time, being difficult or expensive.

If people have time to spend hours scrolling on phones they have time to cook properly and to use said phone to find recipes that are quick and upf free. If they don’t want to that’s entirely fine and their choice but it is a choice.

You can make sourdough in a bread machine, and base your soup on a chicken

FFS! It wasn’t that long ago when ‘ordinary’ people were washing their own clothes by hand, cooking from scratch, making or mending their own clothes and walking to work but hey, you do you.

Once you start making your own stock you won’t ever go back to the cubes. You make a vat of the stuff and freeze it, it tastes soo much better and costs peanuts.

OP, stick with it! It honestly gets easier. I was despairing a few months ago but I'm on top of it now.
A lot of ignorance on this thread about what UPFs are and what harm they do, ignore.

I spent most of Sunday baking and cooking, but I do that every few weeks and stock up the freezer.

I don't make my own sourdough as it's a faff, I buy supermarket sourdough that's non UPF (can also buy Jason's) but yes that's more expensive.

I make chicken stock from bones and freeze. Make hummus, pesto, wraps, pizza bases, cakes, flapjacks in batches and freeze. I don't make jam as such, just cook down some yellow label Berries with some water and honey (no faff with pectin/temp etc). Throw out the cooking sprays, balsamic vinegar etc they're all UPF.

Some non UPF foods are cheaper than the UPF, some more expensive. Once you've done your food shop a few times it wont take as long as you will know.

Keep going - It's so worth it. You will feel so much better and I have lost weight too.

Don't really know what you want from your post. 'Permission' to eat crisps because it's all useless?
Eat food as much as possible that is recognisably from a farm. Of course pasta, stock cubes will have been processed - maje as msny good choices as possible. Sourdough- knead thoroughly until elastic, refrigerate rise, bake when using oven.

Totally agree, it's difficult

Today I've had porridge with milk, sugar. Homemade leek and potato soup for lunch. Processed cheese sandwich on brown. Salmon, rice, green beans fro dinner. Dried dates for snack.

I buy beef bones and put them in the pressure cooker/instant pot and freeze them in 250ml ice “cube” trays. It’s not very difficult but also it’s not the be all and end all. Is a run not worth doing if you can only do it once a week? Or a book not worth reading if you can’t read another in a fortnight?

Just do nice things that you want to do. It doesn’t matter a jot if you don’t “make it a habit”.

OP, do you have any understanding of the history of food? UPFs were basically invented to make fuelling your body cheap and easy (whilst making huge profits for food manufacturers and causing an obesity epidemic). Pre-UPFs people generally spent more time cooking less tasty food. The odd stock cube is probably not the end of the world, the meals or snacks that are 50% plus UPF are much more of an issue.

I agree it's not hard, but it takes planning and the will to learn the skills.
I think you under estimate how many skills have died out- I noticed most people's baskets were very different from mine even 30 years ago. I live in East London and even Indian shoppers have sauces packets and ready meals these days- it shocked me when I first saw it because usually their baskets were very similar to mine up until 10-15 years ago. As people have earned more they have leaned on processed food, takeaways and restaurants more and more.
The cost of living crisis has just thrown these issues more to the fore.

No one is denying its more effort but not a ridiculous amount.

I gave examples of meals I was cooking this week earlier. None of them will take more than half an hour. The implication that 'cooking from scratch' requires hours and hours of intense labour that no one but the wealthiest and most privileged have the money or time do is a nonsense.

And, tbh, if other people choose not to because they don't want to, that's up to them. But that's not the same as it's really hard for ordinary people to do it.

I don't see that we are generations away from it either. I was born mid 70s. My mum cooked from scratch, my grandma cooked from scratch. I cook from scratch and my adult children cook from scratch. My children do use convenience foods occasionally but they are well aware that they are making a choice to do so and don't think that a ready meal spag bol is the same as one they've made themselves which seems to be a common argument on these types of threads. That there is 'no difference'.

You can buy a pack of frozen and portioned beef stock from M&S or I just buy borough broth brand when it’s on offer.

Bay's kitchen stocks are brilliant, but yes, it is hard to reduce UPFs.

I did too- there is nothing impossible about cooking from scratch, but the truth is many people don't want to- it does take time, and getting in late, then facing cooking from scratch is more than many people want to do- they look to products to help , and that is where the UPF comes in, everyone then argues about the relative value of different brands/ reading the ingredients.
It's a mistake to say cooking from ingredients is not more trouble and requires more skill, and many people are generations away from doing this- I grew up in the 60's and 70's and my mother rarely cooked entirely from ingredients, my grandmother's also worked, and also did little cooking, saying it is effortless and people used to do it is disingenuous, also many mothers and grandmothers didn't work or worked part time.
We all process food when we cook, but once you rely on packets jars and tins the processing and extra chemicals and processes become a problem, but to beat the UPF problem you do have to put more effort in- there is no way around it.

I agree about the confusion.

Cooking is a process. Every meal you make is processed too one degree or another because you don't eat it as it has grown.

Butter is processed because it's been churned. But you can make it yourself if you're so inclined.

Butter substitutes you couldn't even begin to make yourself.

UPF is full of crap you wouldn't actually ever eat ordinarily and your body neither needs nor knows what to do with it.

Plus, you can make your own spice blends and keep them in jars so you don't have to check recipes or measure out specfic quantities each time. None of it is difficult.

I'm coeliac and have been making the best homemade gf bread in a dedicated breadmaker. 2 Eggs, 450g gf flour, 40g buckweat flour, 50ml milk, 4 tbls yogurt, 1 tsp yeast, 1-2 tbls sugar, splash cider vinegar, pinch salt. Fast rise.

I've only read the first page of comments but it is clear there is a lot of confusion about UPF and plain old processing - such as slicing/grating cooking etc. In short anything we as individuals do to food. Ultra high processing involves taking any old chemicals, which may or may not have nutritional value or change mouth feel or whatever and turn the resultant product into something resembling real food. Case in point - some 'ready made chips which clearly made from reconstituted potato starch

You don't need a paste or flavour sachet to make curry or chilli though - cumin, tumeric, garlic, ginger, chilli powder, coriander, paprika. It doesn't really take any longer than using a paste.
I do use chopped frozen onions, garlic and ginger though!

Even if you do use a paste though, lots aren't really UPF.

Me neither. Recipe books and recipes on line pretty much all refer to separate spices .