Is restaurant food ultra-processed?

[Cocopuf]

Say I go to my local Indian restaurant and have a curry, rice, naan. Obviously it’s not very healthy in and of itself but is it ultra processed food?

Maybe ask them how much of the food is made by them on the premises? It entirely depends on the individual restaurant.

Also depends on the options you choose.

If it’s all made in house using fresh ingredients and yoghurt instead of cream for sauces etc., it can be a healthy option.

All chain restaurants and many independents and most takeaways use huge tubs of bought in sauces etc as it’s a very cheap way of getting the food on the plates.

I’ve done take out deliveries for a number of places and the kitchens are just full of these vast tubs and bags of ready prepared stuff that doesn’t even need to be refrigerated prior to opening.

It puts you off eating out other than in more expensive places where you can tell the food is cooked fresh.

Well a very enlightened thread on here revealed that most chain restaurant food is from a company called brakes.

It's all frozen and in rhe restaurant it's cooked via hundreds of pinging microwaves!

Chefs are actually doing very little at all with the odd teeny bit of fresh stuff.

Absolutely nothing is home made

Previous thread here

There's a book called The Curry Secret that gives the recipe for a base sauce that's then turned into about 90% of the dishes on the menu at any Indian restaurant. I assumed this is what most of them do rather than buying in the sauces, but especially in this day and age when everything costs a fortune it wouldn't surprise me if they just buy most of it in from Brakes.

Pre made isn't what OP asked though - ultra processed is different to "healthy" as in calorific.

Ultra processed is food that's been messed with, processed and manufactured to make it ultra palatable, with synthetic ingredients.

Pre made base sauces are fine so long as the ingredients are all natural and they don't add preservatives, stabilisers etc.

I can't answer the question, but it's not a question of being fresh or low calorie!

I wouldn't say curry is ultra processed no. They make a "curry gravy" which they use as a base for pretty much all their sauces, then adapt them/add other ingredients. It can be pretty calorific as they use a lot of ghee.

Depends a lot on the restaurant and your choice of dish. I know an Indian restaurant close to where I live where they do cook the vast majority of their menu from scratch. I know this as have visited with someone with an allergy and the chef came and spoke to us, he said he made all his curries from scratch so any ingredient could be left out or subbed.

We're you to order a curry in a chain restaurant it is a lot more likely to be bought in with additional preservatives etc.

At a local pub a steak might not be ultra processed but the peppercorn sauce served with it may.

@DarkVelvetySilkyShiraz

OP isn’t talking about a chain restaurant.

A couple of things are standing out from this whole debate.

1.Whether one selects certain foods or not based on the degree of UHP is largely a risk assessment

2.there is so much confusion as folk look for answers. Knowledge is power. Unless you select a squeaky clean diet, nearly every food we eat has been processed in some way even fresh potatoes have been washed and that is a process. The issue comes when food technologists introduce non foods for specific reasons - the icecream that doesn't melt because it's got stabilisers and emulsifiers from non food sources whereas if you make it yourself you'd use egg for the same reason. The difference though is that home made icecream probably wouldn't have long in the freezer after it's made and it wouldn't have be jostled and jiggled over our wonderfully smooth roads for hours. Shelf life relates to the quality of the product so keep beyond the time and it will start to dry up and get a thicker 'crust'. If home made icecream was kept for a long time it would get a 'crust' more quickly.