What do you eat each day if you are UPF - Free?

[Lifeisinshambles]

I’ve been gluten free and trying to cook from scratch a lot more the last few months. Now I’m at the stage where I want to start prepping some lunches for work, and really take the best care of my diet as possible, whilst also keeping it relatively easy. This is what I’ve got so far;

Breakfast -
Coffee with hazelnut milk
Multivitamin

Lunch -
Homemade soup (Miso tofu & rice, Chicken veg & rice, Chickpea & potato etc, all with lots of veg)
Vegetable egg muffin
Baby bel
Dark chocolate nut clusters (Literally just dark chocolate, coconut oil and lots of nuts mixed together, I always crave something sweet after eating now that I have quit vaping!)

Dinners -
Anything! Thai curry, Spaghetti bolognese, Turkish pasta, Stir fry etc. Homemade, upf free & lots of veg of course. We use gf lentil pasta.

Dessert -
Greek yogurt with Fruit, Nut mix (Walnuts, Pumpkin seeds, Chia seeds & Flax seeds), Honey and Cinnamon
or
Oatmeal with Fruit, Peanut butter, Honey and Cinnamon

I have spent a lot of my childhood and teenage years abusing my health and my body, now that I’m in the start of my 20’s I want to take control of my health again. I’ve quit vaping after being addicted for over 6 years (although still having a cigarette now and then when I need to!!), I have a fairly active job, and I already enjoy cooking. This is the final step!

If you eat upf free, what do you eat on a typical day?

Did you mind up to about two years ago?
I'm not eating emsulsifiers, stabilisers, thickeners and gums thanks, I may be eating real food that has a tiny amount of these things as a processing aid, but I am sensible enough to understand proportion in all things and old enough to know a fad when I see one.

You understand that people make decisions based on the information available to them?

I use their wraps as pizza bases. They are great it you don't mind it thin and crispy, just pre fry them first to crisp them up. They work out much cheaper than the dedicated pizza bases.

Oh that's a great tip, I'll try that next time as also have the wraps in at the moment

Hold on, so I can freeze cheddar then defrost it and its fine? Ooooooooooooooh thank you you for this information! Genius!

I had already edited my post before your reply

Farm meats, cheeses and dairy. Organic pulses, beans, rice, nuts and oils. Vegetables and minimal fruit.

My son has Coeliac and I try not to use alternatives and cook from scratch. I make things like white fish with rice and veg. I make a tachini sauce from raw tachini, smashed garlic and lemon juice to dip raw veg into. Brown rice cooked with onions and lentils. I make chickpea patties by blending tinned chickpeas with a grated carrot, fried onion, coriander leaves, curry spice and cumin then frying or oven baking them. Will you use almond flour? You can make great flatbreads with it, drizzled with olive oil and za’atar. Loads of Middle Eastern and Indian recipes use natural ingredients and they can teach you about spice combinations as well.

@OhMaria2

It was a revelation to me too! It goes a bit crumbly but the taste is fine.

We eat baby bels rather than chunks of cheddar cheese, as cheddar seems to upset my boyfriends’ crohns massively.
Cheeses like babybels, halloumi and feta don’t seem to affect him. No idea why!

Does he have histamine intolerance? Cheddar, especially when aged is a lot higher in histamines than the cheeses you mentioned or it could be down to the higher fat content in cheddar.

I am upf free due to some health issues so I follow a specific diet which happens to be upf free.
breakfast - usually Dorset simply nutty cereal w homemade cashew milk, seeds, homemade wholewheat bread (breadmaker) w a nut butter. Banana. I tend to have porridge in the winter.

Lunch - often egg-based w smoked salmon, avocado, cucumber or a salad or jacket potato w various fillings - cheese, tuna, sweetcorn.

dinner - fish/chicken/stir fry/ pasta and sauce etc.

i make all my own baked goods too.

if I wasn’t in my special diet I’d olbe strict at home but not out or in holiday but there are certain foods I’d never eat again!

Knowledge is power though, no? We weren’t aware of UPFs until v recently so even if you ‘think’ you’re eating healthily, like I was in the main, I actually wasn’t as healthy as I thought.

@MrsVinceVega sorry to go slightly off topic, but would you mind sharing your recipe for chickpea burgers please? I tried making some a few years ago but they just completely fell to bits! TIA

I mashed a drained tin of chickpeas, added some chopped spring onion, parsley and coriander leaves, and some cumin. Then, a beaten egg, which holds it all together. I either grill or bake them.

I don't always follow recipes, sometimes I just wing it and it usually works!
.

I have home made wraps, lightly toasted with smashed avocado and pomegranate seeds or brown clean pasta with mushrooms garlic and olive oil.

homemade chips with home made ketchup style sauce

lots of poké bowls too

There is nothing new in cooking from scratch and making nutritious meals. I do that myself.
What is new is this silly drive to avoid minute traces of things that are in no way harmful and substituting them with junk like Cheesestrings and a particular brand of crisps because they tick all the upf free boxes.
What is the end game?

I’m not totally upf free but I try and minimise it….

Typical day for me would be
Breakfast - porridge with mixed berries or stewed plums
Lunch - chopped salad or roasted veg with homemade hummus, homemade soup or dhal in winter
Dinner could be anything but I always cook from scratch

Why are cheese strings junk? They're just made of cheese.

The upf stuff isn't minute traces of most people's diets, it's about 50% for adults and more for children.
More studies are showing it is harmful, that's why (some) people want to avoid food that contain a lot of industrial food-like substances and eat more real food instead.

If that's not something that interests you, why join a upf thread?

Cheese strings are just cheese to be fair. I’d rather feed that to a child than cake.
Plain ready salted crisps are better than monster much for example if you fancy a bag.
Vanilla ice cream much less processed than say Ben and Jerry’s - you get the gist, right?
Have you read Ultra Processed People. It’s all explained well in there.

@Katypp what researchers have you read, listened to etc. about these additives that you just don't believe?

Zoe Nutrition, Ultra Processed People etc. present the latest links between stabilisers, emulsifiers etc. and serious harm to humans. I find it concerning and convincing.

My issue is the 'research' is an ever-changing window.
I am 57 and in my adult lifetime, I can remember several fads off the top of my head, all of which were hailed as the healthiest way to eat, all of which amassed legions of fans (like this thread) and all of which were overtaken by more 'research'.
The high fibre diet
The high carbs diet - pasta and bread were eaten in large quantities
The Atkins diet
The latest fad is the non-UPF diet.

Then there is the list of foods to avoid: Butter and cheese were thr baddies not so long ago, with everyone turning to margarine as it was considered healthier. Then rapeseed oil was hailed as the 'best' fat, now that is to be shunned apparently. Coconut oil has been both a baddie and a goodie in the past 15 years. You can't keep up. What's happened to sugar? That was the devil's food in the mid 2010s - is it still?

And there is always people who will evangelically turn to this new way of eating as if it is the definitive way to eat - it don't be, I promise.

We were avoiding dairy last year but I read upthread that dairy is now OK again. Thanks to research of course.

The one constant is basing your diet on what used to be called 'wholefoods' and avoiding unhealthy snacking on rubbish.

I can - and do - absolutely get on board with that. What I can't get on board with is buying expensive brands to avoid a pinch of emulsifier or making your own ketchup to avoid eg colourings. These ingredients are only ever going to make up a trace of your overall food intake.

It's that obsession which will pass over when the next fad comes along.

@Katypp The relevant part now though is that decades ago, ultra processed food didn't exist or not in the quantity is does now.

I'm older than you and can easily recall all the points you make.
However, it would be stupid to ignore science and most of the points made against UPFs are based on science.

There is research across the world on the gut microbiome, with regard to its importance in treating disease and how drugs work better for some diseases if the microbiome is healthy.

I don't think it's an obsession as you say, but given the disastrous health of the nation at the moment (75% overweight or obese) something needs to be done.

The basics are if you can't find it in your kitchen cupboard, or buy it in a supermarket as an ingredient, then it's likely to be an ultraprocessed 'additive' .
And nearly every ready meal contains sugar, or a version of it like maltodextrose, which are UPF form of sugar. They are even in baby foods, which is a disgrace.

I agree with a lot of what you say however.
We just need to get back to home cooking, like it was in the 40s and 50s, but because most people now are not working in manual jobs like heavy industry, and not walking as much, we don't need the amount of carbs they ate then.

I agree with @LisaNando‘s post and @Katypp’s conclusion that “The one constant is basing your diet on what used to be called 'wholefoods' and avoiding unhealthy snacking on rubbish.”

The current obesity crisis is due to many people eating mostly UPF, and too much of it. UPF are designed to make people overeat: the contain mostly cheap carbs and sugar plus ‘recovered meat’, salt and all kinds of artificial flavours, flavour enhancers, emulsifiers, binding agents, artificial sweeteners and colours. They also have very little nutritional value, which means that people never feel truly satiated.

Those who have read Ultra Processed People or The Blood Sugar Solution or one of the other books about the effects of UPF will at least try to overhaul their diet and eat more real food. The problem is that many people avoid this information and continue to eat rubbish because they “can’t cook” and/or can’t be bothered to cook real food.

Also, most of those who eat too much UPF also don’t exercise and avoid walking, so it’s a double whammy of very unhealthy and dangerous habits.

I agree, UPFs are designed to be delicious, addictive, and as cheap as possible in order to make profits.

I am not obsessive about avoiding UPFs but I cook almost everything I eat from scratch. I enjoy it, it tastes good, and it's much more satiating. For example, a slice of my homemade wholemeal, rye, or mixed grain bread is so much more substantial and filling than any shop bought bread.

It doesn't have to be expensive, but to be honest, I'm prepared to pay more for good food.