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?

My gripe on this is it comes back to schools and cookery not being taught.
There's been a drive to have this changed but it's never happened.

When I did domestic science, we had to cook a 3 -course balanced meal in 2 hours as part of our O level. We learned the basics of making pastry, stews, sauces, and the nutritional values of foods and the science of how flour thickened a sauce.

My own kids who are now adults learned to 'assemble' a dish by taking in a bought pizza base, tomato puree and a slab of cheese or a packet of ham. And they made a Christmas log with a pre-bought choc roll and decorated it.

We've now had 2 generations who have never been taught to cook so unless they are interested, they don't know how to and don't know anything about cuts of cheaper meat, how to make cheap family meals, etc etc.

In my head, home made soup has always been a faff and I never have stock so never make it.

Well, today I decided to go for it, sans stock.

It was surprisingly easy and used up all of the open bits and bobs in my fridge. I'm a convert!

I fried up some onion and garlic and spice, added water, added whatever I could unearth from the fridge (half tin baked beans, open packet rice, half tin plum tomatoes, veggies).

@lisanandoI appreciate what you're saying, but why would school teach this? You cook every day at home, teach your children then?

My issue is the 'research' is an ever-changing window.

But that's the scientific method. Respectfully, your post is like The Enlightenment never happened.

'You cook everyday at home...'

My children are adults and left home years ago, and are excellent cooks.

Do you not appreciate that many families were never taught to cook because their own parents didn't?

Many families rely on ready meals or fast food because neither parent can cook traditional meals.

Excellent @Xavier78 !

Stock isn't critical and you can get organic stock cubes if you are so inclined.

The Book of Soups produced by the Covent Garden Soup Co has lots of good recipes. You could probably get one online secondhand.

I agree that children should be taught to cook at school. I thing the national food strategy produced by one of the Attenborough boys mentioned this. But th3 whole thing seems to have been quietly shelved.

It was Henry Dimbleby.

Of course! Doh

I’m trying to move us towards low upf… constantly trying to improve.

I usually have:
breakfast: yoghurt in the summer with thawed frozen berries, or porridge (rolled oats, largest I can find) and berries. kids love these options too.

lunch: Sumer salad based around 1/2 tin of different type of beans, tomatoes, cucumber etc. handful of nuts, good olive oil, acv, sprinkle of Zoe everyday 30.
winter is batch cooked home made soup of anything I can find, plus some beans or protein added on the day. Olive oil, Zoe grains again.
kids: Jason’s bread roll, cheese or tuna, chunky veg same as my salad (toms/cucumber etc). Activia yoghurt (going to try to change this I think), some whole fruit and a home
made bar-the children take turns to make it each weekend usually based around some kind of fruity flapjack.

dinner: something like fajitas (Crosta wraps, make my own spice, veg, still getting the pre made dips so need to change that). Or home made curry (not too spicy for kids) chilli, roast, fresh pasta (is that upf??) home made sauce with tuna. Airfry salmon, veg, couscous with pomegranate.

late evening. This is the worse bit for me. I’m moving to dark chocolate as i find it knocks my sweet tooth out super fast. I also like a velvetised hot choc in the evening. Have changed to have just milk and sprinkle the choc on top to lower the sugar but it still nice.

For those buying wraps, take a look at Jade’s Bites on Instagram as she makes her own wraps which are super easy and really nice. She has lots of easy bread recipes too (loaves, rolls, focaccia etc). There are some other brilliant homemade recipes too, which are great for bunging in the slow cooker.

Meat, veg, fruit, cheese, yoghurt, grain, fish, leaves, rice, pasta, herbs spices and oils are essentially everything we eat.
Today was omelette with smoked salmon and asparagus, lunch was a beef Kofte, green salad leaves and Tzatziki, and dinner was a donburi bowl with sliced steak and cauliflower rice.
Had a bit of time in my hands today though - on work night, I usually have meat and air fried green veg or similar.