How to eat less ultra processed food as a family?

[lil328]

I was brought up on ultra processed food as a child, am overweight but slowly losing weight!
We have a lot of ultra processed food as a family.
Any tips how to have less or what to eat?

We both work full time, 2 young children, so try and do quick dinners which always seem to have something ultra processed in it.

Start with a basic recipe book and buy ingredients.

Shop around the perimeter and the nutrition aisles of the supermarket - fruit and veg, meat, fish, cheese, eggs, bakery, home baking, pasta, rice, spice/ herb, and tinned food / beans aisles.

Avoid the aisles of biscuits, snack cakes, crisps, pop, the refrigerated ready meals sections, the jars of sauce and gravy.

And try to cook in bulk when you have the time - a weekend morning for instance, so you'll have frozen dinners to reheat during the week, or meals you only need to add rice or pasta to.

If you have freezer room then batch cooking healthy at the weekend could help. We don’t have freezer room unfortunately.
But we do use our slow cooker a lot- shove it all in first thing and leave it cooking all day, quick to serve when we are ready. I use microwave rice on busy days to speed up serving

I try this too. Making choices on food helps - eg a Crosta & Mollica frozen pizza is better than a supermarket branded one.

I buy Jason’s sourdough bread as its non UPF.

Batch cooking helps - making plenty of Tom sauces can be turned into spag Bol/chilli/lasagne etc. look at the Batch Lady for ideas beyond this - you can prepare ingredients ready to chuck in a tray
when you get home, or pre cook something that just needs heating up.

What are your quick meals and how can you substitute for non UPF?

And finally, don’t beat yourself up attempting to go 100% non UPF, keep some balance to it all.

Go back to basics.
Buy fruit
Buy vegetables
Buy fish and meat
Eggs, cheese etc
It's not difficult to make a quick family meal .
There are lots of recipes online.
Don't buy ready meals, takeaways etc
You will all be slimmer and healthier if you stick with it
Good luck

If you are looking for cookbook recommendations Dr Saliha Mahmood Ahmed's are great. She's a gastroenterologist and Masterchef winner and her recipes are stuffed full of gut-friendly ideas. Quick and easy to make too.

what are you buying that's "ultra processed"?
i've recently switched to dry beans and lentils vs canned and am pleased with the results.
i'm not convinced that the amount of seed oils i use are an issue (i don't deep fry food).

Stir fry (no need for jar/packet sauce - just use garlic, ginger, soy sauce)
Omelette or oven frittata
Pasta with homemade tomato sauce or spag bol
Oven-baked fish with new potatoes and veg
Big mixed salad with chunks of cheese / meat / hardboiled eggs and new potatoes
Homemade soup (batch cook and freeze) with good bread
Chilli or veg chilli with rice

What are your go to meals that the dc like at the moment and then we can try and suggest alternatives ?

Keep it simple

Sausage and mash
Pork chops and roasties
Omelette and baguette
Soup and roll
Ham, egg, chips

Etc etc

Start with breakfast - usually eaten at home, and simpler than other meals.

porridge oats
eggs
toast with upf free jam or nut butters
some baked beans are upf free

We ended up buying a bread maker but tbh good is better than perfect - if you want upf free bread the Jason’s brand is good.

Then look at simple swaps for other meals/snacks -

Homemade popcorn instead of crisps
Fruit, veg
Potato dishes instead of premade mash etc if that’s an issue for you
etc.

Get a breadmaker to make bread that has 3 or 4 ingredients not 15.

Rather than trying to completely change everything you eat, start swapping things you consume lots of for similar products.

If you eat lots of cereal, swap to weetabix or porridge, or M&S now do a range of UPF free cereals. If you use lots of bread, swap to sourdough, Greek yoghurt instead of fruit yoghurt etc

If you currently eat lots of UPF, tying to change everything you eat will end up overwhelming you and you’ll give up. Just try and make a better choice each time and it will all add up.

the above breakfast idea can be taken one step further with home made jam which is easy to make, see about local honey from a hobby/craft bee keeper.
baked beans again are easy to make and freeze really well.

You need:

Less reliance on the supermarket.

A weekly veg box. I use Riverford and choose exactly what I want each week - fruit, veg, yoghurt, bread, cheese, muesli, etc. I don’t buy the recipe boxes but they may be useful for you.

A really excellent supply of wholefoods. I buy in bulk from Hodmedod’s whose website has recipes beneath every ingredient.

To spend a couple of hours on the Farms to Feed Us database, where you’ll find a comprehensive list of independent suppliers of every possible food. (Scroll past the donations bit and just click on the database, on a device with a wide screen.) Once you start ordering coffee, cheese, broth, from individual sources you won’t look back.

This is what we’ve done. We also use it to make pasta and pizza dough etc. My husband makes stacks of flatbreads, tortillas or chapatis at the weekend. We store them in the freezer and get them out as needed.

I cook up a batch of soup for the rest of the week at the weekend too.

On weeknights we’ll often make double portions of things we cook from scratch (curries, risotto etc) and freeze them to eat the following week.

Tray bakes and stir fries are some of our quickest meals when we’re in a rush. Just chop and fry or bake some veg with some meat, add a carb and you’re good to go.

It can be hard work (we have a baby and a four year old) trying to cut out UPFs and it takes up lots of our spare time but it’s definitely worth it. It helps if you enjoy cooking though 😅

@TheBirdintheCave reminded me - we make homemade pizza with the kids once a week instead of a shop/takeaway pizza. The dough is rough and not very refined but hot and with the toppings they like it gets wolfed down.

This! If I do my food shop at a large supermarket then I only go down a handful of aiseles!
don’t try to jump from an UPF diet to knitting your own lentils overnight or you’ll find it hard work and the kids will probably revolt at their change in diet. Start with small tweaks that will make a big difference…..
swap sugary cereals for full grain and lower salt / sugar ones such as shredded wheat, oats, bran flakes, weetabix.
switch white bread for wholegrain
plenty of fruit and veg
make your own sauces rather than using jars
natural yogurt with fruit rather than flavoured sugary ones
ditch ready meals and takeaways and make your own versions

watch the batch cooking programme that’s on channel 4 at the moment with Joe Swash for ideas and tips!

I’ve started following a few people on insta with ideas for UFP swaps - Katrina Sabourin is one.

It’s been mentioned already but, with regard to time - when I was a child with two parents in full time professional jobs, most dinners were prepared with enough for two days. Eating the same thing the next day wasn’t called leftovers - it was called sensible housekeeping.

I’ve continued from their example - though nowadays I may also freeze the extra portions. There’s really nothing better, at the end of a long day, than taking out a carefully made dish you already know you like, and having it ready in ten minutes.

My advice is to start by switching to wholewheat pasta rather than white, brown rice rather than white etc - it's not necessarily that those things are UPF, more that you'll be starting off on the right foot with more fibre and wholegrain.

Then I'd focus on small changes, one at a time. For instance, stop buying jarred tomato sauce and start making a big batch with veg in it that you blend to smooth, reduce, and freeze in portions (e.g. Souper Cubes/massive silicone ice cube trays). When frozen, put them all in a ziploc and defrost as needed, thinning with water. These are really handy for quick pasta sauces, curries, stews or even soup (if you thin it enough!)

Then your next change could be something like stocking up the freezer with homemade sausages rolls for packed lunches - use all-butter readymade pastry and buy plain sausagemeat from the butcher. Add lots of grated veg and your own herbs and spices, bake and freeze.

After that you could resolve to e.g. only eat homemade soup, or make your own granola or similar. Then you're making smallish changes, in stages, and you aren't over facing yourself by swearing off all UPFs immediately (which is pretty undoable if you're not used to makin a heck of a lot of your own food!)

I'd also recommend following someone like Sophie (surname escapes me!) on Insta - an Irish lady who recommends lots of helpful supermarket swaps to foods with less ingredients. Hopefully someone else will remember her surname!

Sophie Morris is on Insta with low toxic/low UFP suggestions.

You can batch cook so you always have something in the freezer. I usually have bolognese sauce, lentil soup and, if I’m in luck, spanakopita in the freezer. Then for the week I make sure I have rice and pasta in stock, veggies to make savoury rice, some form of fresh meat or chicken and lots of chilli, onion, tomato, mushrooms etc for quick pasta toppings. When the DCs were little their favourites were bangers and mash and creamy tomato pasta on repeat!

It’s not easy to get non-UPF sausages, ham, baguettes, rolls or soup (unless you make your own bread and soup).

My go to is shoving chicken/fish/pork in the oven with vegetables with a form of potato. What do you normally eat, OP?

When you say quick dinners that have something ultra processed in what sort of stuff are you talking about?
Single ingredient foods are the key and it doesn’t need to be expensive either….veg boxes are vvv expensive but you can save lots by buying seasonally at the supermarket