Avoiding ultra processed food or choosing vegan options to help environment?

[HaggisTheGreat]

In the last couple of years we’ve been exploring more vegan options in a bid to be more environmentally friendly, and have found a few replacements for milk/cream/butter/etc that work for us in terms of taste and price. But now I’ve been reading/hearing a lot about the risks of ultra processed food (ok, not new news, but big topic right now). The vegan options (eg oat milk or soya yoghurt) are generally much more processed, with lots more additional ingredients versus plain/organic dairy versions. So then is the choice better for environment or better for our health - but then damaging the environment is ultimately bad for our health… It just seems like such a minefield…. Has anyone else had this dilemma and managed to resolve it satisfactorily??

I'm vegan and it does generally depend on the product. For example, I think oats are relatively efficient. Most soy is grown for animals so the statistics on that don't really reflect what humans eat. Generally eco wise, being vegan can be a good choice, but so can other diets that include meat, depending on quantities etc.

In terms of health it does depend what your goals are. If it is weightloss something like 21 day kickstart By ND Barnard might be worth a look.
Processed vegan food, however does not guarantee a good weight. I've put on lots of weight because since having baby I've eaten less whole foods and more processed crap.
Put all that aside, I think both vegan and non vegan products have enviromental pros and cons, but the best things you can do for the planet are very simple.

Eat local produce as much as possible.
Don't overbuy and create waste.

For health on the otherhand

Eat whole foods
Try and avoid fast and processed foods

Not very helpful I know, but can be followed regardless of the type of diet you follow.

Oh and it is always worth looking to see who is funding these studies that look into health outcomes, often they are biased and you will find Big wine company commissioned wine is healthy for you study. Big shock!

Great reply above. I'm team vegan. Livestock are hugely damaging to the environment, and they're sentient. Plus the pandemic is a huge example of why animal farming is a poor idea. You can easily buy low processed vegan food, there's a big market for it from healthy vegans and omnivores. It just takes a while to learn what's available and where.

I'm not vegan & no intention of going vegan but can totally respect other people's choices. A friend had some vegan chicken & I've honestly got no idea what was in it but whatever it was it was super processed! I wouldn't think that's a healthy option?!

You can make your own oat milk easily enough if low processed food is a priority.
I do find it tricky to avoid UPF if I'm in a rush but I'm trying to structure my day so I can cook slowly while listening to an audio book.

I don't think tofu is ultra processed in general. We eat loads of tofu. I can make my own seitan as well that keeps for ages in the freezer.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/vegan/4226851-Lazy-not-too-processed-vegan-meal-ideas

Loads of suggestions here.

No tofu is generally not processed and is often fortified with calcium etc.
The downside to making your own milk is that it won't be fortified with b12, calcium etc. so you need to make sure you are sourcing those and other nutrients elsewhere.
@Tigresswoods, great name! I tend to cook processed stuff when cooking for people who are used to meat, as I know its more like what they are used to having. Although I have done lentil based dishes for meat eating friends and they've been happy with them so that's good too :)

Any industrial agriculture is damaging to the environment. Doesn't matter if it's oats or cattle, both are damaging.

Is there an argument that meat farming is more energy intensive because you have to have arable farming over however many hectares to make animal food and then the eg cow farm taking up more space, using up more water etc?

I have a distant memory of an infographic

I'm a believer in reducing meat consumption, reducing unnecessary packaging, eating as close to one ingredient food as possible ( ie checking the ingredients list on everything) and trying to do local and organic.

An awful lot of cows in this country eat mostly grass, so that doesn’t sound right.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/28/what-plant-milk-should-i-drink-almond-killing-bees-aoe
This is quite interesting

And domestic species co-evolved with humans - both domesticated animal species and domesticated plant species.

It was mutually a beneficial relationship like co-evolution elsewhere.

Humans didn't subjugate anything. We're not actually that powerful, much as we seem to enjoy the fantasy.

Maybe you want to aim for a plant based diet rather than vegan.

Vegan food can be just as junky as non vegan food or worse like you said. I lookat the ingredients on some vegan dishes and it puts me right off.

If you eat seasonally and locally as much as possible then you won't go far wrong.

Ultimately, consider what your nutritional needs are - not just the calories for your body and activity level or the pie chart of proteins, carbs etc but the minerals and vitamins you need. Where do they arise in the environment, how do they get into your body, how much do you need.

Then think about how those nutritional needs would be met directly if you didn't have a supermarket. Those needs naturally require us to consume a variety of food from different sources, varied plant species and varied animal species without wasting any part.

We could not have survived on one source of food even if it met the calories, the malnutrition and critical deficiencies would have killed us. The environment could not have sustained the crops necessary of low calorie plants being produced to excess in order to meet energy needs on their own.

Then find the least damaging way to source the food that will meet your needs (accepting the limitations of the world as it is).

If you need supplements and manufactured stuff that's fortified then something's gone wrong and you take a step back to evaluate why that's become necessary. If the only way to meet your calorie needs is to buy processed 'fake' food or a greater share of a plant product than is sustainable for the planet to produce at those volumes then something's gone wrong and you're not achieving your goals.

The purpose of food is survival so meeting your health needs comes first in the flow chart otherwise the whole endeavour is pointless, then you find the environmentally protective way to meet that. It may not align anymore with the previously held or preferred ideology.

Balance. That's what it comes down to and where we got lost.

That's all anyone can do and more sensible than fads or cherry picking a focus point. It's not actually that complicated if you strip things back to basics rather than tinkering at the edges of old habits in accordance with incompatible ideologies.

No tofu is generally not processed and is often fortified with calcium etc

Well it doesn't occur in nature in that form so it must be processed to a degree. Likewise yogurt, all the vegan milks etc.

It's a spectrum and all about balance. Lots of common vegan foods, eg avocadoes, quinoa are grown intensively on the other side of the world, probably on mega farms that hoover up massive amounts of water. All the processed burgers etc will be made on production lines in massive factories. Then there's the health issue, a lot of vegan foods contain a long list of ingredients so definitely fall into the UPF category.

The list posted by @TheSlayer is probably a good place to start if you're not vegan for animal welfare reasons. And any reduction is a good thing.

So if you go from eating red meat most days to only eating very occasionally, eating a bit of chicken, but having lots of plant based/low meat meals, you've reduced your carbon footprint. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Maybe think of a few vegan/vegetarian/low meat* meals and mostly cook those.

For burger type foods at home, you could probably try making your own bean burgers rather than buying in ready made ones, especially those that attempt to replicate meat so will have extra ingredients and have been 'texturised'.

*Low meat. Instead of serving steak and chips, make fajitas and only include a small amount of steak and lots of peppers, onions and beans. Likewise chilli can be a small amount of meat (try turkey instead of beef to reduce carbon footprint) and lots of beans and veg. A pilaf with a small amount of chicken (eg one thigh per person) plus chick peas, spinach, onions. Stews or soups with lots of pulses and veg as well as a small amount of meat per person.

Then if you've been here for very long, you'll be familiar with the concept of the much maligned Mumsnet chicken, but that's actually a long standing way of eating meat from a time when chicken especially was very expensive, had to do a few days meals with everything used and was only part of the meal, not the main focus.

Which illustrates the problem, 'normal' is now relatively large portions of meat, eaten most or all days, sometimes more than once. So if you go down to eating it only a couple of times a week, and smaller portions, you've cut down the amount of meat you eat and the impact of that by probably 60-90% depending on how far you go and where you started from. If most people did that, the benefit to the environment would be massive.