If you're trying to cut out ultra processed foods...

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What do you tend to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

Live alone with DS4 and trying to cut them out. We usually eat a lot of pasta.

Breakfast is usually eggs or some variation of oats with fruit, nuts, natural yoghurt etc.

Try to buy organic fruit but it's so expensive.

Going to buy a bread maker and hopefully start making my own mayo too.

I'd love to hear what others are doing.

Before you buy the breadmaker just be aware that most fast action yeast is UPF - very annoying!

I’m doing whole 30 which is similar I suppose, with really limited additives and preservatives, real food etc.

today I have had:
b- 2 boiled eggs. An apple
l- tinned mackerel in brine (fish + brine only ingredients- not sure if that’s non-UPF but it’s w30 compliant ), 2 fried eggs, Homemade guacamole, lettuce tomato cucumber, and homemade mayo.
snack- banana
dinner will be: roast pork, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, peas, (with mayo, not gravy- don’t judge me 😆)

When I have cut processed foods successfully before, I find it’s easy but you have to cook from scratch. Find a way to use or store leftovers, cook double meals and freeze one, etc. Find a way to make the things you can’t manage without (eg mayo).

What makes it UPF, I would have thought it was group 3?

Is it due to an emulsifier? (Have been googling)

I wouldn't worry about that, personally, as the amount is so small.

Pasta isn't ultra processed is it? Just processed.

I have porridge (just plain oats and milk) for breakfast. DDs have the same.

Often eggs for lunch, generally an omelette with a filling of whatever I've got lying around, cheese, spinach, tomato, mushroom etc. I find lunches the hardest meals just because a sandwich is so convenient, especially if taking lunch into the office. Generally once a week I go into the office and do just take a sandwich.

Dinners I don't find too hard. Last few nights we've had:
Salmon, potatoes and veg
Sweet potato chilli
A chicken leg and cannellini bean tray bake thing with tomato and red wine (does wine count as ultra processed?)
Chicken and mushroom in a creamy sauce with pasta

We've been having a lot of mozzarella and tomato salad for lunch recently.

Am also a fan of chickpea salad with cheese/salad veg/olives chopped up with it.

Why are you making your own mayo? Just interested because the one I buy has exactly the same ingredients you would use to make at home, so why bother?

OK, what is UPF about a sandwich? @WeWereInParis

Is it the bread, the spread, the filling what?

I make my own soda bread. Flour, yogurt, whole milk, bicarb, pinch of salt. That's it. I use Kerrygold butter. Cheese, eggs, salad fillings. Am curious.

The bread. I don't make my own, I just buy supermarket brown or seeded bread which I've always thought was UPF.

The fillings I use aren't UPF.

According to the Zoe study anything you do to a food at home adds to the processing. So buying a tomato and then chopping it, cooking it into a sauce, freezing it, reheating in microwave all take it from being normal food and turn it into a scary and bad processed food.

When I heard that in one of their recent YouTube videos I nearly snorted tea out of my nose. Fuck. That. Shit. This whole thing reminds me of the Blackadder puritans.

Well yes. Humans have been processing foods for thousands of years.

People are talking about avoiding ultra processed food. Not processed food. No one is trying to cut out processed food 🙄

No one is suggesting you only eat raw, unchopped veg.

Surely those were just examples of processing, with ultra processing being what you actually want to avoid.

@PretendUsername that's true, but it's ultra processed foods which poses a health risk. It can be easily identified using the ingredients - any ingredients you wouldn't normally find in a kitchen cupboard at home indicates UPF.

The advice about UPF is aimed at folk who eat breakfast biscuits for breakfast, meal deal sandwich and crisps for lunch and sausage and oven chips for dinner. There are many people like this.

Unless you have all the money and time in the world cutting out every UPF is bordering on insane.

So pasta in your diet OP is not going to be the fast track to illness. And dried yeast in the bread maker cutting out the preservatives in bought bread is fine.

If you are obsessed and get to the point of not enjoying food unless it's this, this, this and this, you are going to have so much food stress in your life and no enjoyment.

Giving your child an enjoyment around food, mostly healthy, but not to worry about the crisps, coke and pizza as a treat is likely to be much more effective than obsessive "pure" foods.

And you still might get ill and then feel cheated.

Today I’ve had porridge with milk and honey in then fruit.
lunch was leftover roast lamb with leftover brown rice, gravy and peas
dinner will probably be cheese on toast (homemade bread from yesterday )

I often have eggs or yoghurt and ground seeds / fruit . Lunch is often based round a jar of chickpeas or beans and sardines or Parma ham if DC not home (Wonder if Parma ham counts as processed but we chose it as has no nitrates ). Dinner often homemade soup but it’s easy and quick as we hsve a thermomix that does all the work really . When children hungry I use it for a lasagne or to make burgers and often make cheesy chips / potato wedges too

Pasta isn’t ultra processed, surely. It’s just processed.

Unless you have all the money and time in the world cutting out every UPF is bordering on insane.

This. I was advised that the 80:20 rule was more than adequate. Your body can cope with UPFs - just don't have them as substantial parts of every meal.

I have overnight oats for breakfast. Lunch is usually salad with tuna and either Feta or halloumi or a sandwich using rye or decent sour dough bread. Dinner is some kind of meat, veg and potatoes or rice.

I agree to a certain extent, and I don't have a big ban on treats, and do eat shop bought bread roughly once a week as I said upthread.

But I disagree that in day to day eating it's that hard to cut out UPF - I could cut the bread out with minimal effort. Maybe it's because DH and I both have allergies (and DH's are serious, he has epipens) so we cook a lot from scratch anyway, and a lot of UPF foods just aren't available to us. The biggest culprits in our diet were processed meats (ham and sausages) and we've stopped eating those. Pasta isn't UPF so that's no problem, and we always make sauces from scratch - this predates any concern around UPF. Similar for sweet things, we can't eat shop bought cakes so would always make those, and they're just butter, flour, sugar and eggs so not UPF.

Most of this is through necessity so we've done it for years so I guess it's something you need to get used to. But I don't find it that hard.

That's really interesting and reassuring. I think I can do that! I've been trying to cut UPF but sometimes have bacon, chorizo or cheese, but I'm making more things.

My favourites are:

• home made granola - oats, nuts, honey, chopped apricot/ raisins/ cranberries, linseeds, sunflower seeds, chia seeds. Eat with Greek yogurt, strawberries or frozen berries (defrosted). This can be pudding, snack or breakfast.

• Granola bars - butter, oats, honey, dried fruit or frozen fruit, nuts, seeds

• Coconut flour patties - coconut flour, bit of hot water, bit of olive oil, salt/ pepper. Make a ball, squash it to about 4mm thick and cook in a frying pan (no oil). You can make a sandwich out of them.

@MerryMarigold cheese isn't ultra processed

Today I have had left over chicken and veg biryani from last night (homemade), melon and banana and then an omelette with spinach, onions and peppers. For breakfast I usually have porridge (just with milk, fruit and nuts/seeds) but sometimes overnight oats or scrambled eggs.
I feel so much better and am used to eating this way now but I have teenagers and their diet is probably more like 80:20.

Is this because the AMA with the 'ultra processed foods' guy fell on its arse?

Because I've never seen it come up before that happened.

Yes the emulsifier - you can get around it by using bakers yeast or soughdough but some breadmakers don't work well without exact ingredients

I am fine with eating UPF when I know that I'm eating it, what annoys me is how insidious this stuff is and even when you are making your own bread its still creeping in unknown

Theres a thread on this every day and people still dont know the difference between processed foods that are good for you, processed foods that are not so good for you and UPFs