Ultra processed food - help!

[Ossoduro2]

Just looking for some guidance on ultra processed foods. I’ve been feeding my kids whole meal seeded bread from tescos for years thinking it’s healthy but looking at the list of ingredients I now think it’s probably in the ultra processed category - can anyone advise on this and what to look out for. I don’t have the time or the will to bake my own bread so what’s the best option for me?

Also, for breakfast I’ve been feeding them shreddies and weetabix (Tesco’s own brand version) and again these seem to have more ingredients than I expected as well as added iron and vitamins. I assume being fortified doesn’t make these foods ‘ultra processed’ but perhaps the other ingredients does. Are these cereals all that bad or are they OK? It’s so confusing!

final point, I saw reference / link to a talk or podcast on ultra processed food on here a week or so ago but I can’t find the thread. If anyone remembers that and can point me in the direction of the link, I really wanted to listen to that.

Surely you know that it’s not at all common to have those sorts of ingredients in your kitchen.

There's a brand of cereal for kids called Alphabites which only has 4 ingredients so I would assume is better, I'm sure someone will tell me it's the devil's food soon though!

They don’t present themselves as experts in the podcast. But they do talk to experts. It’s a really good podcast because one of them struggles with eating too much UPF and it’s very honest. So it’s not preachy in a way it would be if it was done by super healthy stick thin marathon runners. Some of the info was really shocking about the lengths companies will go to to make their food more addictive.

I have a bread maker. It's quite a bulky bit of kit but really easy. I put the ingredients in, set it off overnight and it's ready in the morning. Lasts a good few days if you keep it in a bread bin. You can make pizza dough, cakes and jam in it too should you wish. Literally has bread flour, salt, yeast and a little sugar to activate the yeast, olive oil and water. Olive oil is optional but I think it has a nice flavour with it.
You could always freeze half of it to keep it fresh.

What do you think will happen if you feed your kids Shreddies for breakfast? By all means try and keep things healthy but you sound very anxious.

People can't afford to feed their kids and you're worried about wholemeal bread and shreddies

It's not a race to the bottom

You clearly haven't listed to it. The whole point is them learning about UPF by talking to experts and removing it from their diet under supervision to see the effects.

Op shreddies aren't the worst but to your kids eat porridge Oats?
I have overnight oats with frozen fruit during the week then warm with peanut butter and dates and banana on a weekend as a 'treat'.

Another one of those brands that market themselves as healthy. One of the ingredients is “Coconut Blossom Nectar” which is just a middle class way of saying sugar. There’s 4g of sugar per serving which is about 1tsp.

They weren’t claiming to be experts. They were the Guinea pigs and interviewed multiple experts over the course of the series. It would probably help if you listened to it.

You don’t actually need to activate yeast with sugar. Flour and water is enough.

That is a strange article @TheSummerPalace - they don't seem to have considered whether the bread is ultra processed but put a lot of emphasis on fat and calories - they've given Warburtons white 7/10!

That maybe; but I used to have a bread machine and made my own bread - so the only basic ingredients were flour, yeast, sugar, salt (always half) and fat. I often used buckwheat, molasses, oats, etc to jazz it up! However I have a DD, who would only eat shop bought white bread - I suppose it’s better to know if at least it’s low in fat and sugar? (Her cholesterol is 7.2 with a family history of early heart disease!)

Instead of worrying about avoiding UPF

you could concentrate on including 30 different plant based food into your weekly diet & by the time you’ve done that the UPF will be limited as you’ll be full

The main reasons why UPF is so prevalent is because it's time saving and cheap. When you're avoiding it, it seems that we have to invest more of our own time or money.
Some of the expensive supermarket bread has fewer ingredients.
Sourdough bread costs around £1.80 for a loaf from supermarkets and doesn't seem to have any unrecognisable ingredients.

For weekday breakfast, my dcs tend to have weetabix or porridge. If you soak the porridge the night before, you only need to warm it through.

They do eat supermarket bread as I don't have time to make bread every day but I'm going to start baking bread for the weekend. I found a recipe for overnight proving then bake in the morning which looks good.

Keeping UPF to below 20% seems very achievable. I'm happy with the odd bit here and there.

You probably have at least two of them, especially if you bake. Most can be found easily in supermarkets. Several are also present in fruit. My point is that whether or not an ingredient is found in your home kitchen is going to vary a lot depending on what kitchen it is.

It’s really not. Almost everyone will not have those ingredients in their kitchen. You’re just trying to be difficult.

And finding it naturally occurring in fruit is not the same as having it as an additive in your cooking.

I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm saying that phrases like "is it in your own kitchen", "can you pronounce it" and "do you recognise it and know what it's for" are not good yardsticks for whether it's a good thing to eat. I can generally pronounce everything in ingredients lists, and recognise and understand the purpose of most of them, but that doesn't mean they're any better or worse for my health than if I couldn't pronounce them and didn't know what they were for. And potassium bitartrate is the same stuff whether it's on an ingredients list on a cake or in a tub in my cupboard labelled cream of tartar.

@lollipoprainbow totally agree with you!

Best to either buy freshly baked bread from a real bakery or make your own (easy enough with a breadmaker).

By the way it's pointless to argue whether xanthan gum etc is a common ingredient or not as researchers don't know whether it's the additives in ultra processed food that make them so bad for us or something else. Best to just avoid them where possible www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/news/behind-the-headlines/ultra-processed-foods

@BrutusMcDogface that doesn't seem to be the latest fad does it, when i think my great nan lived to 100 , eating things in moderation , prob walked a lot more than people do now, drank every weekend etc

The problem with ultra processed food isn't just related to the ingredients, it is the process itself which destroys nutrients and also affects the way the body breaks it down. It motabolises it faster making people hungrier and wanting to consume more of it.

This is the process by which most breakfast cereals are made:
'Cold breakfast cereals are produced by a process called extrusion. Grains are mixed with water, processed into a slurry and placed in a machine called an extruder. The grains are forced out of a tiny hole at high temperature and pressure, which shapes them into little o’s or flakes or shreds. Individual grains passed through the extruder expand to produce puffed wheat, oats and rice. These products are then subjected to sprays that give a coating of oil and sugar to seal off the cereal from the ravages of milk and to give it crunch.

In his book Fighting the Food Giants, biochemist Paul Stitt describes the extrusion process, which treats the grains with very high heat and pressure, and notes that the processing destroys much of their nutrients. It denatures the fatty acids; it even destroys the synthetic vitamins that are added at the end of the process. The amino acid lysine, a crucial nutrient, is especially damaged by the extrusion process'.
www.foodmatters.com/article/dirty-secrets-of-the-food-processing-industry

Since I have reduced my comsumption of ultra processed food I have stopped craving it and feel a lot less hungry. I have lost weight despite still eating homemade cakes and fatty snacks such as nuts.

@ILiveInSalemsLot

Have you tried soda bread?

You can make it in the oven cook it on a griddle - well a frying pan.

www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/irishsodabread_67445

Wheretheskyisblue There has been research on nuts and the conclusion was the calorie value was over estimated

so 170 calories is actually only around 130 as an example

our bodies don’t react the same and take from many whole foods so calories are not taken by the body, and that leads back to the fact a calorie is not a calorie- it’ll depend what food it comes from

Wholewheat bread and Weetabix are not the end of the world, it's not like it's Haribo and Red Bull. They still have fibre and not too much sugar.
You could look at moving to non box breakfasts like oat porridge/muesli or eggs, fruit, yoghurt etc.

I believe Morrison's still make their bakery bread in stores, or you could find a local bakery? I'm sure you don't want preaching but a bread maker is a real game changer.