Avoiding Ultra-Processed Foods Thread anyone?

[Treezan82]

I watched the recent documentary on Ultra-Processed foods and just generally would like to improve my health. Anyone else?

We already eat a lot of home-cooked food and make our own pasta sauces etc but def still room for improvement.

Some obvious swaps I plan to make:

Frozen pizza - home made pizza
Frozen nuggets - home made nuggets
Bake cake or biscuits at the weekend and that's it - don't buy any of the packaged stuff

Some things I'm stuck on:

Kids' breakfast. They love toast and cereal and both are full of unpronounceable ingredients. They love fruit too but need something else to fill them up.

Yoghurts - again, kids love them but are there any brands that aren't so full of crap?

Noodles - we just eat plain ones as part of home cooked recipes but even they contain potassium carbonate.

Would love to hear your swaps/alternatives/healthy, veggie-packed recipes!

I would like to join please 😊

I guess there's no shortcut to checking labels and comparing brands. The sainsbury's basics brand tinned kidney beans I buy are just beans and water. I was pleasantly surprised that there's not even salt or sugar added.

I also buy Longley Farm yoghurts. We started buying them mainly for the taste, but they are just yoghurt, fruit, and sugar - fewer ingredients than in the premium-styled organic brands. I can't see that they're any worse than greek yoghurt with home made compote.

Kids have embraced mini shredded wheats - today's small win!!

[quote FudgeSundae]@bluechameleon tinned beans and dried noodles are not ultra processed though? I’ve just checked Tesco black beans (ingredients: beans, water) and sharwood dried noodles (ingredients: flour, egg, salt). I assumed you meant a flavoured version of both which is where the processing comes in.[/quote]
I might have to switch to Sharwoods then - I buy plain dried noodles from Lidl and they contain potassium carbonate. Not the worst ingredients list I've seen but def in the UP category

@Whyemseeaye

Love this thread!

Watched the documentary, it was great.

We give the kids (1 & 3) porridge or overnight oats for breakfast.

Plain Greek yoghurt - Yeo organic.

And re noodles we buy the whole wheat ones, think they have slightly less rubbish in them x

Thank you for the wholeweat tip!

Just looked at the ingredients list for the Yeo version of Petite Filou. Not perfect, but substantially better than the Lidl version I have been buying. However, they are also £1.50 for 4 as opposed to 69p for 6. I can really see why families are resorting to much to UP foods!

I think if you have a decent set-up of kitchen equipment, or are willing to build one, the you can do away with quite a lot if products and easily make your own, if you wish to.

For example, I have a Kenwood and have amassed various attachments such that now we can make our own pasta (spaghetti & lasagne), sausages, juice, soup, for e.g.

But even with the basic processor attachment you can make your own falafels (blended chickpeas), burgers, soup, guacamole, tahini etc.

My husband is a kitchen gadget collector and he bought a dessicator which I was a bit at first at, but it’s turned out great as we use it all the time for apple, mango, banana and tomatoes. All great for lunchboxes and snacks.

Next on the gadget list is an ice-cream maker! It’s also worth buying some ice lolly moulds as it’s ridiculously easy to make them and there are so many flavour combos that you just can’t buy (and you can add fresh fruit too). Yesterday I did virgin piña coladas - coconut milk, pineapple juice, dash of lime and some pineapple chunks. If making for adults you can also add Malibu!

Question for you all: although the problem with UPFs is obviously we don’t know how they affect us/our kids, I feel like the scariest thing was the brain alteration stuff. As such, I’m way more worried about (e.g.) highly engineered brioche that has the perfect softness and mouth feel than I am about one stabiliser or antioxidant ingredient used as a preservative. Do you agree or is ANY chemical sounding ingredient bad?

I’d like to challenge everyone to switch to homemade yoghurt instead of buying organic, honestly it takes only slightly more time than pressing the ‘add to basket’ button when online shopping and the results are so much better. We’ve got a Severin brand 7 pot machine which comes with 14 pots and leaves little countertop footprint!

Definitely look at making your own yoghurt OP, I started about a month ago. Lakeland yoghurt machine was £23. It takes as long as it takes to boil a pan of milk. Then let it cool, wang tub of natural yoghurt (the individual sizes) into room temp milk then shove it in yoghurt maker for 8 hours (overnight). If you want thicker yoghurt strain for a couple of hours.

My dcs love it, and ds (7) is fussy as fuck. To start with I added a bit of honey and then a handful of fruit but now he will eat it plain as well as his tastes have adapted. I actually find hm less tart than shop bought. I had a bowl the other week with a handful of blueberries and a smidge of honey and it was genuinely like a really nice blueberry cheesecake topping.

I've been eating clean for about 7 weeks and feel loads better. The chaos of half term has meant I've slipped a bit this week and I feel rubbish this morning.

I think buying plain Greek yogurt is the best of the ‘bought’ options. Dh and I eat with fruit or honey, and use for tzaziki. Baby Ds eats Greek yogurt plain or with fruit purée. We are lucky we can buy local made yogurt which is basically the same as us making, but previously used to buy Faye total full fat Greek.
Many ‘Greek’ yogurts in supermarket are just ‘Greek style’ which isn’t the same

I've bought a yoghurt maker! It also makes Labneh which is a dip I love and is pricey near me so excited to try that.

My son is autistic and eats a very restrictive diet so I'm really trying where possible to do homemade versions such as making my own wraps and yoghurt. He eats lots of almond butter but I get the pure one which has very few ingredients... Wonder how easy it is to make nut butters? They cost me a bomb so I could try?

Which yoghurt maker have you got @doadeer?

@doadeer - I make peanut butter just by putting peanuts on nutribullet and blitzing. Adding nothing else. Should work the same for almonds if you buy the blanched shelled ones

I got this one. It's not electric but I don't have tons of space for more gadgets and reviews seemed happy

https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B07GZJZB8L?ref=ppxpt22mobbbprod_image

We used to get peanut butter from bulkmarket, but they stopped making it on site, quite a few refill shops do their own pure peanut butter.

So we have done okay this week, half term probably wasn’t the best time to start, but we survived, me being off work was also a big help.

@SimonJT

We used to get peanut butter from bulkmarket, but they stopped making it on site, quite a few refill shops do their own pure peanut butter.

I buy a nice one from planet organic but it ends up costing a lot

@Treezan82 we tend to buy the 1kg plain Greek yoghurt - from Adsa I think it’s about £2.50.

We stew fruit to and add that on top if the kids want something fancy

Tesco Finest 0% Greek Yoghurt is actually made in Greece, and is not some imitation.

• 0% Fat

It's also yummy.

I’ve discovered that Polish shops often sell bread with very few ingredients and no rubbish in it . I use that for toast .

You can also find some bread in the supermarkets with very few ingredients, for example pitta breads and baguettes that you cook in the oven.

My kids don’t like plain yoghurt, but try to add shredded coconut and cinnamon sometimes my kids will eat that .

Oats porridge however they love and it’s so easy to make . I put sugarfree organic jam with only fruit in on top ( but that’s quite expensive ). They also love peanut butter ( make sure it hadn’t got sugar or palm oil in it ) or honey .

Good luck everyone , I really struggle with this myself but even if you just make a few small changes it’s better than nothing 🙂

[quote Whyemseeaye]@Treezan82 we tend to buy the 1kg plain Greek yoghurt - from Adsa I think it’s about £2.50.

We stew fruit to and add that on top if the kids want something fancy [/quote]
groceries.asda.com/product/natural-plain-organic/yeo-valley-organic-greek-style-natural-yogurt/1000276773570

I don't know if anyone has mentioned it, & they are a bit of a "gadget" but last year we got an electric egg boiler as we were without an oven or hob for most of the year. It's really convenient to make soft boiled eggs perfectly every time, ours will hold up to 6 at once, & there's measurements for doing medium or hard as well. No need to watch a pan or anything. I think it was about £8 on Amazon.

I also have a rice cooker so that's also perfect every time & no more burnt rice.

I've been gradually cutting out UPFs for a few weeks. Feel so much better. It does get tiresome especially when you work full time. So I've been eating salads every day for lunch for handiness. Breakfast is overnight oats soaked in Greek yoghurt with chia seeds and frozen berries. We've been eating a lot of potatoes/sweet potatoes/homemade wedges for dinner.

Bought a breadmaker. Money well spent. Haven't bought bread since. Have made baps and pizza dough In the machine too so far. Next on my list is a yogurt maker.

Have been making our own baked beans, wraps, granola, flapjacks, salad dressings. Have always made our own sauces anyway.

Have tried to reduce the amount oil we are using. Use extra virgin olive oil or cold pressed rapeseed oil.

I'm obsessed with checking packaging. Lots of things are full of palm and rapeseed oil. Chocolate, cereal bars, bread.

I'm wondering how bad one or two preservatives are. Say for instance on pack of noodles as someone mentioned upthread.

Needed this nudge to go back to basics a bit, I weaned my kids on home made sauces etc. And we slowly slipped into the ready made stuff for convenience as life got busier!
We do have a bread maker and my partner makes an awesome pizza dough in it, but we have a cupboard full of snacks, crisps and things. I think I might look at the yoghurt makers and also that electric egg boiler sounds fab, bit crazy that even just boiling an egg before the school run is an issue but there we go... Maybe this electric egg gadget can solve that issue!
My nan always used to have a big bowl of stewed apple in the fridge that she made and they had that with ice cream every day (and lived into their 90s!) so I might make a big bowl of that to go alongside some home made yoghurt