How much of your diet do you think is UPF?

[Neverenoughbiscuits]

Listening to the Zoe podcast tonight and it estimates that the average diet is 50% UPF. I actually think that might be quite conservative but that is only based on my anecdotal observations.

I do try really hard to minimise UPF but it is so easy for it to creep in. Today I have had barely any - probably only some cream cheese with the toast, smoked salmon and spinach I had for lunch. I make my own bread but if I hadn't then 50% of my meal would have been UPF without even thinking about it. Yesterday I ate on the run so probably 85% of my diet was UPF; sandwich and packet of crisps from M & S at lunch and Ramona houmous and crackers for dinner along with some fruit and greek yoghurt.

Working in an office, I'd say the majority of my colleagues have a mostly UPF diet during the day. The office is near a Tesco and so many have a meal deal from there. There is always a constant supply of biscuits or cake around. I find it really scary that actually it's far easier to find and eat "non-foods" than it is to have real food.

What percentage of UPF do you think you have on your diet?

Maybe 10%. We have a few allergies in the house so cook almost everything from scratch

I think most of the replies here aren't reflective of the UPF consumption of the general public. Judging by the trolleys and baskets in front of me in the supermarket I'd say at least 50% of most peoples food consumption contains UPFs. Fizzy drinks, crisps, biscuits, white bread, pizzas, etc without the more hidden ingredients. If you then add on all the takeaways and meals out many people consume I'd say 50% was quite conservative.

Probably quite a bit but I'm old, fairly slim and in fine fettle so I'm not going to change now.

That just about sums up how I feel.

God people on this thread are talking about bread like it's the poisonous. How depressing.

DH often buys a baguette and brings it home with the intention of making garlic bread. The moment anyone else in the house (me or 2 teens) spot the baguette we shout "French bread" and then all descend to cut a piece off and have it with butter, (yum!!) while DH complains and says its for garlic bread. We almost never have garlic bread because there isn't enough left! 🤣🤣 although sometimes he hides it when he comes back from shopping

"I always have a nose at people's trolleys in the supermarket and the amount of junk shocks me."

It shocks me, too! The percentage of the "food" in my local Sainsbury's that is UPF is staggering. There is an entire aisle devoted to biscuits and cakes; another one with nothing but snacks, crisps and protein bars; yet another aisle with nothing but ready-meals. Then there is the freezer section, with whole freezers stuffed full of chips, waffles, nuggets, burgers, breaded this & that, ice cream and so on. There's half an aisle of ready-made pasta sauces and spicy sauces and creamy salad dressings. The list goes on and on!

Yes I get shocked by others' trolleys too and regularly snoop lol. White bread cakes biscuits and barely any fresh food. Very little fruit and vegetables.

@Fizbosshoes can 100% relate. I am not to be trusted around a french stick.

@pinkballetslippers thanks, that's very comprehensive.

Good bread is like crack. I will literally eat it all in one go and want more. I made my own for a while to reduce the amount of upf DD was eating, I hardly ever eat sliced bread, but I would just cut slice after slice while it was still warm

My understanding is that any UPF "contaminates" the food so then the entire food stuff counts as UPF. For instance, tonight I made split pea soup which was pureed split peas I cooked myself and... added ham (presliced prepackaged bought in Aldi) and 3 oat cakes and maybe 20 tortilla chips. Among the ham ingredients were preservatives and nitrates so all the pea soup counts as UPF, even if the oatcakes & tortilla chips didn't count as UPF (they probably are 'UPF' too, tbf).

On that basis, at least 90% of my diet is UPF.

The van-guy-Dr-twin campaigner says salt or sugar are UPF but MNers say they aren't UPF, so basically that kind of issue introduces huge uncertainty too.

I’m pretty sure Chris van Tulleken does not say salt or sugar are ultra-processed foods. They can’t be ultra-processed, they are just ingredients. Having a bag of sugar is actually seen as a sign of health in some countries as it suggests baking and making things from scratch. He had said from that I recall that UPF often has more salt and sugar in it to make it more palatable, but that’s not the same as saying salt and sugar are UPF themselves. Salt and sugar are processed culinary ingredients, a 2 on the Nova scale, so definitely not an UPF.

There’s so much misinformation about UPF from misremembered snippets of information that get regurgitated, but if you just follow the Nova classification, it’s actually very very simple to tell what’s a UPF or not on a macro level. There’s no need to make it complicated.

If it has weird shit on the label like xanthan gum, emulsifiers, weird-sounding preservatives or my personal favourite mono and di glycerides of fatty acids or whatever it is, it’s most likely UPF. That stuff is there to artificially prolong the shelf life, change the texture to make it more palatable and moreish, that kind of thing.

If the stuff on the label is ‘flour, salt, sugar, tomato’, recognisable ingredients, then it’s likely not an UPF.

I eat some form daily but it depends what counts?

Breakfast -Granola-yes. Yoghurt, fruit, honey-no.

Coffee? Milk?

Dinner was sourdough-no avacado, egg and spinach-no but I had prosciutto ham-maybe

Snack was a banana-no

Then I drank alcohol and had a bit of coke zero.

Today breakfast was the same as last night's dinner. I put a pump of flavoured syrup in my coffee at work so yes.

Had a ready meal which had lentils and spinach, peppers so good but upf because it was convenient.

Dinner was homemade bolognese -do the oxos count?

Then on my 13 mile run I had 2 gels, 2 squares of Kendal mint cake and half a pack of mini cheddars. Definitely yes.

I'm not going to banish them from my diet, I don't have time to make my own stock, mayonnaise, mustard and sometimes convenience wins over the best diet possible as well as some enjoyment from alcohol and chocolate.

Love your post!

My food rule is if I buy something it should not have more than 5-6 ingredients listed. If there are ingredients listed that I don't recognise (or I know that they are something rather manufactured) then I will not buy it!
Or there abouts, as usual the exceptions make the rule!
Sugar is produced by juiceing boiling & refining a plant- to me it's UPF.
Salt (especially rock and sea) occur naturally in the format we use it - so it's processed but not UPF.

In the end, I would say everyone to their own... your food, your body, your decisions!

Sugar is most definitely not classed as UPF. It's classed as a NOVA 2 minimally processed ingredient along with flour, cooking oil, butter etc.

One of the earliest findings of Carlos Montiero's team was that households purchasing the most sugar and cooking oil were healthier than those who didn't. This is because it indicates cooking at home from scratch rather than a consumption of ultra processed food.

Are you sure he says salt and sugar are UPF, and not just that you still have to be cautious about your intake of them?

The ‘contaminates’ idea doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If you had a baked pasta dish with everything mixed in together but a splash of something UPF in the sauce that would make the meal 100% UPF whereas if you served it separately it would only be the sauce that was.

Is spam upf??

I used to be the bread monster, as in I ate bread at all three meals and at least 2 snacks a day

I could convince myself I had barely eaten because all I had had that day was toast for breakfast, then a sarnie at lunch and then a bowl of stew and more bread for supper, then raid the cupboards for a snack - usually a couple of Nutella sandwiches - at this time of night

I was obese as well as being malnourished

Now if I eat white bread I can actually feel my waist band getting tight and I feel seriously blurgh and have tummy/bowel problems

Bread - ie a white sliced - is the only thing I have cut from my diet, I lost over 2 stone and back to a healthy BMI

But that's just me, what works for me. Im not a carb avoider - dont have the same problems with pasta/ rice/ potatoes , those I still eat

About 30%

Probably yeah

Are you sure he says salt and sugar are UPF

Heck no, not sure. I find the many definitions of UPF entirely illogical, incompatible and impossible to make sense of. If someone says that only "high" sugar & salt are UPF, what is the boundary between "high" and "not high". There is no consensus so impossible to say.

If someone is saying high sugar and salt mean food is UPF it sounds like they haven’t even begun to understand what the term means!
UPF foods typically do contain high salt and sugar but the meaning is just what it sounds like, food that has been processed to an extreme degree. All the stuff about it containing ingredients you don’t get in a normal kitchen is more a rule of thumb to easily identify them, and yes absolutely it results in grey areas, but tbh most things are fairly clear one way or the other.

Very little now, typically only when I eat out and am not sure what goes into the meal.

I also cut down on flour, sugar and starches, although they not generally seen as upf and are viewed as traditional ingredients I think on an evolutionally timescale our bodies have not evolved to handle them in the vast quantities they present in the modern diet.

I reckon about 20%, down from about 30% a year ago.

I cook dinners from scratch but these are mostly upf free although occasionally have something like naan bread or chapatti that I haven’t managed to find upf free. Occasionally I’ll have a ready meal or a frozen pizza but I now buy these upf free (cook and crosta & mollica)

Breakfast is usually porridge or Greek yoghurt, occasionally cereal or eggs. The cereal is sometimes upf.

Lunches I’ll have a sandwich or wrap or leftovers. Bread and wraps are now upf free but sometimes I’ll have cream cheese or something in it.

My main upf comes from eating out and from treats like ice creams.