If you and your children eat a low- UPF diet, what does a typical day or week of meals and snacks look like?

[Uffadoo]

I'm watching a documentary about UPFs (ultra processed foods) and it's made me realise that I think we have far too many in our home. I would really like to cut this down, we have a 9month old, 2 year old, 7 year old and 12 year old. The baby, 7 and 12 year old will eat absolutely anything but the 2 year old can be picky to the point of having lost weight in the past and was referred to a dietician and paediatrician (she has now put on weight and generally eats much better but not always great). I do make a lot of things from scratch but a couple of nights a week, after clubs, I might stick on frozen pizzas or chicken nuggets. Snacks in particular tend to be UPFs (we do have yoghurt and fruit often as snacks too though).

I would love to hear what a day or week of meals and snacks looks like for you and your family to get some inspiration. Is there any tips for foods that you can get that wouldn't be UPFs if you get them elsewhere? For example DD2 loves sausages, if I get sausages made by the butcher would that be better or are they a no go?

This is what I ate yesterday.

Breakfast:
Overnight oats: gluten-free oats, chia seeds, unsweetened almond milk, ground almonds, goji berries, pumpkin seeds.
Oat latte from Pret.

Lunch:
Sweet potato, plain tuna.

Dinner:
Salmon fillet, tenderstem broccoli, spinach, kale.

As well as non-UPF, I aim for:

• Gluten free
• Sugar free (apart from goji berries - around 5g of sugar)
• Dairy free

Mine are teens so we don’t have the level of control you have when they are little but a few things:

I highly recommend a bread machine.
Ds has porridge every day.
We have a popcorn maker (cost about £15!) so late night movie watching snacks are not UPF and cost pennies.

like everyone else said - bread machine!

breakfast- homemade bread toast with homemade marmalade or jam. Boiled egg. plain greek yoghurt with honey.

lunch - homemade bread sandwich with cheese or tuna or egg or peanut butter (difficult it find to avoid upf for fillings. we use whole nut butter). fruit. homemade cake. boiled egg. carrot sticks or cucumber sticks.

dinner - homemade every night from scratch apart from Friday when we have frozen pizza (to be fair i could swap this to homemade but it's a long day at work & clubs). pudding is greek yoghurt with tinned fruit in juice (only processed not ultra processed).

no ready made sauces. shop bought bread or cake products. no packet food generally. no crisps or choc.

but we do buy fizzy pop sometimes and oven chips. id say we were low upf not no upf.

We recently started seriously cutting down on UPFs and we found it helpful to think of swaps for the things we eat regularly. Such as cereal, bread, wraps, mayonnaise, etc. It's been much easier than I expected!

There's a Facebook group called Go UPF free: Non ultra processed food finds. I search for food on there and see what comes up but it's been so helpful. It even lists things like ready meals, jars of pasta sauce, frozen chips, etc that are non-UPF.

The UPF in my household are snacks like cookies and biscuits. The kids do have them daily but I tend not to worry about it as they are snacks and make up less than 10% of their food intake.

Our meals are almost all cooked from scratch. They bring home-cooked lunch to school. They are allowed a coke or fanta when we dine out but only drink milk or water at home.

this is a very interesting perspective and I agree with you.

We limit UPF, but are very aware that food can very easily become weaponised if you take things to extremes.

I try and work on an 80/20 rule where 80% of our food is free from UPF. I have two DDs aged 7 and 4. I don't worry about their school lunches for example if food at home is mostly decent.

For breakfast we tend to have either plain greek yoghurt with fruit and honey, porridge or something on toast (Jason's sourdough sold at Tesco and Sainsbury's is a reasonable brand.) There are lots of 100% nut peanut butters out there so that's a staple, or honey, or just butter, or you can get jam that doesn't have UPFs.

Snacks are fruit, plain yoghurt, crudités etc. A lot of bagged popcorn is fine and not UPF. M&S also do a good date and treacle loaf that I give DDs for something sweet. All butter shortbread is often fine for biscuit options.

Lunches are things on toast. Eggs, avocado, hummus, tomatoes, mushrooms etc. Or wraps instead of sandwiches. Crosta&Mollica wraps are just flour, oil, salt, water and really nice. We have parma ham instead of other sliced ham. Serrano is also normally just pork leg and salt. Cheese is usually fine.

Dinners I focus on homemade as much as possible but there's an increasing amount of stuff out there that doesn't have UPF. E.g. the Heinz pasta sauces are normally fine so that with a bag of pasta and some cheese and veg is a quick dinner. McCain Naked oven chips are just potatoes and oil if you want an option.

Standard dinners for us are: chilli and rice, fajitas made with the Crosta&Mollica wraps, pasta dishes, jacket potatoes with tuna, casseroles, risotto, homemade curries etc. I batch cook some things like chilli and curry to make life easier another day.

There's a great Facebook group/Instagram page called Go UPF free or something like that and they share products they find in UK supermarkets.

Thanks for all the responses, they have given me some ideas.

I agree about not demonising foods but I think that I am often falling back on convenience foods sometimes these days, particularly for snacks but also dinners- getting a tray of lasagne from lidl and garlic bread, my own would be far nicer anyway but it's just getting the time sometimes. At breakfast we often have cereal too, although love toast or porridge and eggs.

Realistically I know I won't make my own bread because we don't have space for a breadmaker but would shop bought bakery bread be better? Like lidl's? Budget is a consideration for us too and another area where sometimes I end up with UPF as it can actually be cheaper sometimes, for examples I can buy a tray of Lidl lasagne for cheaper than I can make my own.

@Peekingovertheparapet you're so right. The Times regularly runs articles ins which they suggest swapping £1.80 digestives for £4.50, four in a packet, artisanal biscuits and it drives me crazy every single time!!!!

Our biggest UHP culprits are things like biscuits and bread and oat milk due to dairy intolerances. The biscuits I just try to limit and don't beat myself up about. And I avoid larger treats of this kind - eg we don't have cookies/cupcakes/muffins often but if we do, we make our own. I do make our own bread sometimes but frankly, DD won't eat it. She does quite like a baguette and I buy the par-baked ones which I've discovered have a much better list of ingredients! Similarly, me, DH and DS mostly eat a good quality sourdough bread that is processed, but doesn't have th long list of incomprehensible ingredients.

My big thing is I try to buy higher quality options if I am buying convenience. So rather than mass produced fish fingers I look for the crumbed fish fillets from the supermarkets and if you look at the ingredients list, it's almost always less concerning. I haven't bothered looking at pizza ingredient lists as we eat it so little, but if we were having it more often, I'd definitely be comparing ingredients. Again though, as per Peeking's point - I can do this as we can afford the slightly higher quality, if not the crazy insane artisanal swaps The Times recommends.

As for what we eat
breakfast: homemade waffles, eggs, homemade pancakes, porridge (from oats, not instant). Occasionally we have cereal as a treat - same rules as above apply as much as possible. We do often do smoothies using a combination of fresh and frozen fruit, with greek yoghurt and milk.

Lunch: sandwiches/wraps etc. DD does like ham but again, I try to buy higher quality with fewer ingredients. Fruit. Cheese, tuna. etc.

Dinner: almost entirely cooked from scratch. we don't use ready sauces as we don't like them usually so the only really high processed food we have is things like a bit of ketchup or soy sauce or whatever (plus the odd crumbed chicken/fish as referenced above). We do eat processed foods obviously like pasta, noodles etc but that's not UHP.

to give you an example of how we're trying to make better choices, without going completely OTT because we don't have the time or the money, these are the sort of breads we try to buy more of:

sourdough

baguettes

Vs what we used to eat a LOT of:

Hovis

It IS more expensive but not as crazy as, for example, a loaf of Gails sourdough - I went past a store the other day and nearly passed out in shock! Even our local bakery, which doesn't say what their ingredients are, charge £4 for a loaf of sourdough bread.

Lidl annoys me as it’s hard to see their ingredient lists. Even their yoghurt doesn’t include it.

There's a reason we almost never have lasagna - too much hassle to make and the ready made ones probalby aren't great quality!

OP, I feel your pain. Trying to get it right is hard. I think trying to cook more from scratch, even if you have to change slightly what you have, might be helpful. eg swap lasagna for spaghetti bolognaise - we have bolognaise at least once every 10 days as I can cook it easily and cheaply, add lots of additional vegetables etc. Vs lasagna which I batch cook twice a year (sometimes less) and then freeze in individual portions. Inevitably that means we enjoy lasagna occassionally for a few months then nothing for a few months until I get around to doing another lasagna batch cooking afternoon.

I think it's probably easier and cheaper to cook as much as possible from scratch, then you don't have to feel as bad about the odd snack or the fact that your bread isn't always the best choice. Even cereals aren't all the same - some are definitely better. Or swap to eating eggs/porridge or homemade baked goods for breakfast. Another batch cook thing I do once every few months is a big batch of muffins that can be easily frozen, for example.

I'd try and start with some small swaps. Look at snacks first - don't buy anything branded for kids. Have fruit and raw veg sticks, crackers and cheese, boiled eggs. Have plain yoghurt with fruit (frozen berries), so much healthier and cheaper than the fruit yoghurts. Start looking at packets more, for example salted crisps have minimal ingredients compared to something like Wotsits or Doritos. See if you can batch cook and freeze, so you have quick dinners.

I think it’s also a reduction thing. Lasagne takes ages, so I always make 3 and freeze two for quick evenings.
But quick evening meals here would be scrambled egg on toast, pesto pasta with spinach and peas. that type of thing.

You should be able to see the ingredients on Lidl bakery bread. Basically look for something with less ingredients or stuff that’s what you have in your kitchen ie no preservatives. The bakery even in Lidl should have far less additives than the packaged stuff

The Roasting Tin books by Rukmini Iyer are very very good for easy low effort meals from scratch.
They’re not ideal if you have fussy children as everything gets cooked together so it’s hard to separate out elements that individuals won’t eat, but there are quite a few things that go down well with everyone.

We have never eaten much in the way of highly processed foods. Nothing virtuous about my approach, it’s just how I was brought up (my mum is from Provence) and I really enjoy food and cooking.

To be honest, I can’t get too worked up about the UPF we do eat. We are all pretty healthy and enjoy positive attitudes to food (which can’t be taken for granted when you have teenage girls). And I’m certainly not going to increase my domestic labour for minimal difference (apart from complaints from
the kids)

Here’s our food for today:

DC- Scrambled eggs on toast, fresh juice
Me- A hot cross bun and coffee

Lunch: DC have school lunches. Apparently one had cabbage and potatoes with grated cheese and the other had pasta and tomato sauce
Me: Roasted veg, pouch of mixed grains, Greek yoghurt

Kids’ snack: Toast and honey, apple

Supper: Fish pie mix (haddock, salmon, cod) baked in cream, lemon and wine. With peas and rice

I’ll have a glass of white wine, with a square of dark chocolate with decaf coffee after supper.

We’re not perfect but have really reduced supermarket bread by using my bread maker weekly.

Things I make:
bread, naans, pizza bases, pasta sauces, pizza sauces, flapjacks, chocolate chip cookies and all cakes.

Things I still buy:
wraps, rolls, hard biscuits like digestives, breaded frozen fish, weetabix and shreddies. Very occasional bacon/sausages. My mum has bowel cancer so I’m very cautious about processed meats now

And I always make my own salad dressings now. Usually a French vinaigrette.

I have found reading this thread really interesting as it isn't something I have really put any effort into. Ideally I would like to but I see our barriers as:

• fussy 2 year old with a dairy allergy who is border line low weight
• budget- we are tight on our food budget most weeks anyway so more expensive options not really possible
• Time/energy- see above 2 year old!
• Lack of space- unfortunately we only have room in our flat for a small fridge/freezer so batch cooking isn't really an option which would solve the time/energy and possibly fussy issues. Also no room for bread maker for instance

However I do aim to cook a lot of our dinners from scratch- probably about 70% but do use things like pataks curry paste in them.
I'm going to try to do some semi regular baking with my daughter as she loves it and it could help with snacks.
I will also try to be more aware of it when I'm choosing between items in our food shop and when budget allows.

Uffadoo we get butcher’s sausages from the local farm shop because they are really tasty and they do brilliant ‘special editions’ - Marmite and venison anyone?
To be honest, as long as they have a decent meat content and you aren’t eating 47 a week sausages aren’t likely to do you much harm. We don’t have them often but nothing can beat a sausage cooked on the fire pit in the winter, or stuffed in crunchy baguette with a bottle of beer 🙂

this week... I poached a whole baby chicken and have been making Wraps with salad and flatbread (sadly not homemade this week as I've been a bit unwell) for brunch. I cooked some beef at the start of the week and have been making stirfried buckwheat noodles (from a brand that uses no additives) with soya sauce and oyster sauce, loads of different veggies and chillies.
snacks have been greek yoghurt with maple syrup and toasted almond flakes,apples, plums, hotcross buns and bits of fruitcake from a bakery (no additives).
I will also make a roast tomato soup today with the broth from poaching the chicken.

my other favourite thing to do is to make a batch of pizza dough on the weekend and then have home made pizzas for the rest of the week. I do cheat sometimes and use shop bought pesto as the base layer

I’d found I’d fallen into a fair bit of UPF due to having fussy eaters . I’d always cooked from scratch pre kids. My big changes have been to bake all snacks - so oat cookies and flapjacks , completely do away with cereal and replace with porridge or overnight oats and to do away with supermarket bread in favour of a better alternative. I’m now cooking from scratch a lot more again though so feed a fair bit of UPF to my youngest - fed is best

Can anyone link a good source of information on what we should be looking for when reading packets etc? I had a look at the Facebook group mentioned above and they were recommending things with ingredients I would have assumed you should avoid- absorbic acid for instance

There’s a useful Insta account called go upf free which highlights supermarket products that are ready made but UPF free.

It does tend to be the more expensive options eg Crosta & Mollica features a fair bit, so do brands like Biona, but there’s also a few own brand things.

Like PP I batch cook a lot so have quick & easy meals on tap so very few ready meals or ready made sauces. Our downfall is snacks - the DC aren’t enthusiastic about any savoury home made snack options so it often feels like a choice between home made but sugary VS savoury but UPF.

There’s a few things I use regularly that do have some nasties in but are a fairly small proportion of the overall meal, eg a stock cube or a bit of oyster sauce.

im struggling with sandwich fillings. previously salami, ham, egg (mayo?) tuna (mayo?)

ideas? whole nut peanut butter is popular but only allowed at one of my kids schools.

i like hearing about swaps. i might start making pizza again.

We’re fairly low UPF but not UPF free.

I make bread in the bread maker although the yeast I use is UPF.

Breakfast - Greek yoghurt and honey, fruit, toast butter or nut butters. Some time I buy some free from cereals which are UPF free. Occasional DH will make blueberry pancakes on a Sunday.

Lunch - Oldest has a packed lunch sandwich tuna and salad cream, egg and salad cream, cheese and pickle. Salad cream and pickle are UPF. One type of veg - corn on the cob, sugar snap peas, pepper, cucumber and one fruit - apple or grapes, occasional tinned fruit. One sweet treat, home made cake or biscuit or shop bought short bread.

Younger is at home for lunch and we have bought UPf free soup and a sandwich or left overs.

Dinner - I use the slow cooker a lot, bbc good food and taming twins websites are a good place to start but they’re not all UPF free. I also batch cook. Pizza, spag bol, shepherd pie, tuna pasta bake are all staples. This week we’ve also had Moroccan aubergines with apricots and oven baked chicken, panner curry, humus falafel with greek salad.