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

[mibid]

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.

I eat porridge oats with milk every supper time, omelette or homemade soup for lunch (carrot and coriander or lentil soup).

For dinner just usual meals but smaller portions. I can't cut out all UPFs.

I do have rich tea biscuits with mid morning coffee. Fail!

Fruit for other snacks.

I have cut out sweets from my diet as I need to lose weight even though I really enjoy them 😭

There's a great podcast of MM and Tim Spector at Wye Festival discussing UPF and what/how to eat. Well worth listening to.

Oh good. I wasn't sure.

Wow that is so kind. I'll absolutely cover postage. I'll pm you, thank you.

Waitrose sell some bread that is OK, the number 1 sourdough. I also get the M&S German style rye loaf from the bakery counter and there is also a sourdough one, I'm sure these are better than the general supermarket loaves

I bought a sliced sour dough in co-op that isn't UPF. It's pretty expensive. I bung it in the freezer and use it for the odd slice of toast.

Yes I put my bread in the freezer, I portion it up as soon as I can, DH and I have always had separate bread for years as I have the nicer less processed expensive loaves and the small packs of Schneider Brot rye bread, whereas he likes the not so healthy M&S super soft thick sliced bread and any French sticks and never do our bread paths cross.

If you were feeding a family on the better bread though it would be quite expensive. M&S super soft sliced is about 75p for a large loaf and small rye loaf is £2.50.

It really doesn’t matter if there’s a bit of emulsifier in your yeast. You use about 5g of yeast in a 500g loaf, so the actual amount you ingest per slice is absolutely tiny.

Its great to be aware of what you’re eating but please keep your concerns proportionate to the amount of risk.

What mayo do you buy? I've never seen one in a shop that isn't UPF and full of rapeseed oil.

Yes I just use the easy bake yeast for my oven baked rye loaves and spelt and rye breadmaker ones as it is a very small amount, I don't make bread very often though, breadmaker is more often used for jam as it makes small batches rather than a big saucepan full. It's just a cheap Russell Hobbs breadmaker I bought in the pandemic but the bread is quite nice.

Why are you making your own mayo?

because it has flavour, takes 2 minutes and isn’t UPF

Organic Oats with yoghurt/fruit for breakfast

Lunch - this week I've had roasted veg with lentils (with a balsamic vinegar/olive oil dressing, made enough for a couple of days)

Home made hummus with crudités

Veg fritters have been my favourite lunch, grated courgette/carrot/spring onions, squeeze moisture out and season, bit of gram flour to bind them then fried. I had them with some of the homemade hummus.

Dinners have been salads/veg with chicken

I couldn't cut it all out though, I still have a sizeable amount of chocolate every day which probably undoes any good

To answer the OPs question:
Breakfast: overnight oats or porridge with fruit and Greek yoghurt.
Lunch: rice and beans salad. I make a huge batch twice a week and bung in whatever veg I’ve got, plus some kimchi.
Dinner: depends on what we fancy. Everything is cooked from scratch though using real food.

I finished listening to Ultra-Processed People this morning. My diet has been heading in this direction for a while now but this book is the final push I need to go to really try to cut out as much UPF food as I possible can. I’m doing it for gut and mental health, not weight loss.

re bread, the emulsifiers in yeast is a pain in the arse but I’ll use up what I’ve got in the house before trying to source some non-UPF stuff. I’m having great success with air fryer bread at the moment so don’t need to invest in another cumbersome gadget for the kitchen.

I get confused about chorizo and Parma ham. I buy the types with only salt as a preservative- ingredients are either pork and salt or pork, spices and salt. Parma ham meat can’t have been mechanically recovered, it’s thin slices. I have salt in my cupboard at home and we need some salt in our diet so why does it count as UPF?

I had chemo last year and found immediately that UPFs now make me feel ill. So I eat whole foods as much as possible, and try to eat the 30 different fruit & veg a week as well.

Breakfast - oats/fruit/yoghurt, wholemeal toast & home made jam. Jam is good because I make a huge batch of two kinds and it lasts months.

Lunches - homemade soups, tinned or pan fried fish or chicken and salad, omelettes, home made salads including nuts, olives, and home made vinaigrette. Fruit

Supper - grilled meat or baked fish with mashed potatoes and veg, slow cooked casseroles or curries made with whole ingredients with brown rice, or peppers stuffed with minced meat. Bottled fruit & cream.

I don't have time to make my own bread during the week so I tried a lot of different ones and for me, Waitrose Heyford wholemeal works. as long as I don't eat too much of it.

This time of year, I bottle fruit and make bramble jelly, fruit & herb vinegars, my own chilli sauces, chutneys etc, so I have a cupboard full of them for the rest of the year. They are all easy to make and mean I have healthy versions and can just grab a jar without having to read labels. Cheaper too.

Breakfast

• Porridge, Plenish oat milk, mixed seeds
• Full fat organic greek yoghurt, mixed seeds, berries
• Scrambled egg, mushrooms, tomato, red onion, red pepper, butter beans, basil
• Scrambled egg, mackerel, avocado

Lunch

• Veg omelette side salad
• Chicken/Salmon/Prawns with mixed salad (I do add cheese eg full fat feta)

Dinner

• Chicken/Salmon/Steak veg potatoes traybake
• Chickpea veg curry brown rice
• Pasta with chicken/salmon and tomato basil chilli sauce
• Veg fried rice with cashews and pineapple
• Lentil Dahl rice

Snacks

• Fruit
• Nuts
• Banana oat bars
• Smoothie with fruit + yoghurt
• Treat - 80% dark choc

I male these flatbreads which are just yoghurt and flour. They are very nice.
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/user/12304531/recipe/easy-yoghurt-flatbreads-varying-sizes

They make good pizza bases too.

Parma ham is group 3 not UPF.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/what_is_ultra-processed_food#:~:text=Group%20three%3A%20Processed,in%20syrup%2C%20beer%20and%20wine

If I have a sandwich I buy Crosta and Mollica wraps and Jason’s sourdough from Tesco which I believe are not UPFs like normal bread

I want ti reduce upf but I suspect even the Van Tullekenns would have a bottle of mayonnaise. This is getting a bit silly!

And is a bit orthopedic in leanings. That way really can lead to quite disordered eating

I make pizza dough in the bread machine which the kids love. I buy organic flour and yeast without emulsifier from www.shipton-mill.com I buy big sacks and freeze into bags.

I started cutting them out before I'd even heard the phrase 'UPF' although we never had eaten it much.

All food you buy in the supermarkets is processed to a degree - none of it exists naturally as you buy it. So people who get snarky about cheese being processed, or beef being minced, or jars of passata etc don't really bother me. It's the ingredients I look at.

It's the UPF stuff that is the issue.

I don't always eat breakfast because I leave for work at 7 and don't have chance to eat until lunch. But, if I do, it tends to be scrambled eggs made with butter, eggs royale (without the muffin). That sort of thing.

Lunch would be salad and some protein (eg tuna mayonnaise) or reheated leftovers from the night before.

Dinner is cooked from scratch (or batch cooked and frozen) - chilli, bolognaise, meat/fish and veg/salad, curries. Etc. I'll buy a Thai red curry paste, for example, but there's one in sainsburys which is 'clean' in that the only ingredients are the ones you'd include if you were making it yourself - no added sugars or anything else you wouldn't put in yourself.

My daughters favourite is chicken thighs with skin or pork belly with broccoli and mushrooms cooked in a garlic, (full fat) creme fraiche and parmesan sauce.

We dont eat puddings generally but, if we do, we have whipped double cream and berries. Like an Eton Mess but without the meringue.

I make my own mayonnaise. Haven't eaten shop bought for years. It takes 5 mins, lasts for a fortnight and tastes much nicer.

I only eat (genuinely) healthy fats - eg olive oil, and animal fats eg butter, and lard. Never eat 'industrialised oils' such as sunflower, rapeseed or vegetable - cheap oils that were never intended for human consumption but they're cheap so UPF producers love it...

I never feel bloated any more, never have digestive issues, much more energy, sleep better, joint pain is gone, skin is better, never experience extremes of hunger (eg griping hunger pangs or feeling stuffed) and don't crave junk food either so I don't actually feel I'm missing out.

I listened to the Chris and Xand podcasts on it recently. One thing that really stood out to me was your body not recognising UPF as real food. Which is why you can eat a whole pizza to yourself, or feel hungry again half an hour after eating a takeaway, and can eat a whole tube of pringles without it ruining your appetite! People can generally eat a greater quantity of UPFs than they would the equivalent 'real' food. Something to do with them not triggering the same hormonal/brain responses as 'real' food. It's factory created food facsimiles that look like food but aren't. Your body just doesn't know want to do with it. It fills your belly but that's about it

I've lost around 3 stone over the last few years without trying by cutting out UPFs and cutting down on carbs too. It's not a calorie defect that achieved it either. I used to calorie restrict (1200 cals) and struggled to lose weight but now eat around 1600-1800 calories a day and I'm the same weight now that I was 20 years ago.

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?

I believe there's a Hunter Gatherer one that is clean but, as a pp said, lot of them contain rapeseed oil because it's cheap. Clean mayonnaise is expensive - it's cheaper to make it yourself 👍🏻

I use almond oil or light and mild olive oil as a base for mine.