Reducing unltra processed food

[Illbefinejustbloodyfine]

Is there a good website/page i could follow that isnt extreme? But more realistic?

Get in the habit of skimming ingredient lists. Shocking, particularly some major brands.

Just stop buying it and buy fresh food. Make your own pastry and cakes etc. Buy a basic recipe book if you don’t know how to cook, but it’s not that difficult.

There are brands that are not upf. Crosta and mollica are usually ok. We have haagen dasz (no idea how to spell it!) vanilla ice cream and use mutti pasta sauces, and there are some heinz ones which aren't upf. I have a bread maker or buy Jason's. Salted crisps only. Snacks we buy shortbread, crosta and mollica bread sticks, Bonne maman yogurts, and of course fruit. There are some cereals in M and S that are very limited ingredients - but we haven't tried them as I don't eat breakfast. We only buy full fat products. I do like oat milk in my coffee but again you can buy oat milk that is choc full of additives or oat milk that is not - just read the pack.

We aren't religious about it; in our case it's about reducing UPF by making judicious choices.

I'd start by working out (roughly) which 5-10 UPFs makes the biggest part of your current diet and then see how many of them you can find a good swap for. Sometimes identical seeming products will be very different in their contents so you can solve it by a bit of label reading. Pasta sauces can be high in UPF but there are lower UPF brands if you shop around. Bread will often be a big proportion of the diet for many people but can be more tricky to swap - I love our breadmaker but it's a big upfront cost.

Once you're comfortable with those swaps, take the next 10 and work on those. Hopefully breaking it down like that means you're able to make the quicker, easier changes first, which is likely to make the biggest difference.

Shorter shelf lives will be something you'll need to manage as UPF does make food last a long time. Making good use of your freezer really helps here - I can't be bothered to do a dedicated batch cook but always cook double quantities and freeze the extra.

Ive been doing this unwittingly for over 10 years before it became a 'thing.'

Best tips are meal plan, if you are busy and to keep it simple.

Mid week meals that are quick to make at home and are child friendly are things like pasta bake, home made fish cakes, home made burgers, shepherds pie, chili con carne spaghetti bolognaise and home made pizza. I use a 2 ingredient dough to make the base.

My kids are grown up but I wouldn't buy cereal, I remember calling it shit in a box and all these years later I was proved right although for different reasons!

Breakfast for the kids was scrambled egg or poached on toast or porridge.These days I have full fat Greek yogurt with seeds and nuts

A lot food aimed at children's very high in upfs. As a rule of thumb if its in a bright package with cartoons on avoid!!! It is much cheaper and healthier to buy a kilo of Greek yogurt and add flavourings individually than little pots of yogurt that are loaded with sugars and stabilisers.

Don't knock making your own bread!! It takes a couple od minutes , if that to put in a machine and it does it for you. I have picked up a bread making machine for 15 quid from Face book market place.
Of course you dont have to do this but look for the best bread you can.

You dont have to get it right 100% of the time. Its just about being more aware of what you are buying and eating.

There are loads of ideas on Instagram, tik tok and face book.

You might find the book 'Why We Eat Too Much' by Andrew Jenkinson useful - this will give you a good understanding of what constitutes UPF and what to avoid.

Aiming for reduction not elimination is sensible and realistic. It is something you can build up to if a sweeping change is difficult - for instance, start by avoiding UPF at weekends when you have more time to cook, and then over the course of time, introduce more non-UPF meals during the week.

For breakfast, eggs are a good option - an omelette, scrambled, boiled. Plain yoghurt, fruit, porridge (not ready-made porridge) are all options; on the processed but not UPF side you could also consider a German style breakfast of cheese and cold meats/fish.

You could replace the crackers with oatcakes.

Packaged snacks could be replaced with fruit, dried fruit, veg sticks and hummus, bread and jam/honey/peanut butter, cheese cubes, oaty biscuits, shortbread, home baking.

What are your usual UPF breakfasts? Easiest swap for UPF bread is bakery bread if you have a bakery near you, or Jasons. Cereal can be swapped for porridge, muesli, shredded wheat, organic weetabix (can add fruit, dried fruit or honey for sweetness). Some brands like M&S are starting to do non-UPF versions of things like cornflakes.

We are reducing our UPFs as a household this year too. I too have decided against making my own bread etc, with so many breads out there and not wanting to waste my time looking the ingredients on the back of every single one. I’ve been asking chat gpt to help me find one depending on which shop I’m in. Also finding switch.the.upf account on Instagram helpful and easy family loved swaps without costing the earth.

I am aiming to purchase a bread maker. I just need to stop procrastinating, and do so.

Nuts are my usual snack, very portable and filling.

I think we must be careful not pressure or guilt ourselves about spending too much time in the kitchen, adding to all the many other daily jobs we all do.

My air fryer is so helpful - I put in salmon fillets or lamb chops, get on with other jobs eg laundry or whatever, and when they're ready just grab salad vegetables from the fridge that don't need preparing eg cucumber, sugar snap peas, radishes etc.

Puddings can be instant too, eg bananas and greek yoghurt. I need to approach it this way as I've been close to burnout in the past.

Why is Mumsnet obsessed with this all of a sudden? Has someone been on TV rambling on about it or something? Just chill out. Eat more home cooked meals, drop the junk food snacks.

Yes more home cooked meals, that some people struggle to know how to do, if it is not a ready prepared meal, that they can just bung in the oven, or microwave. It is not a bad thing that more awareness is happening regarding the poor state of the diets, of too many in this Country. It all takes time.

I've been doing this since about 2009 when DC went to school and I released how much we rely on beige and packet food... so long before it became a thing .

Dead easy, read the label before you buy. If your gran wouldn't have known what some of the ingredients are, it's upf, put it back on the shelf. That is a bit glib because it's not always obvious what the ingredient actually is. Citric acid, oh lemon juice you think, no it's commercially made from a mould related to the black one that grows on your bathroom window frames, acidity regulator - sodium hydroxide (presumably needed to counter the citric acid), I do have sodium hydroxide, in a bottle in the garage, with its more normal domestic name, caustic soda, I use it to clean the drains not to make cakes.

Thanks all for some great suggestions!

@UnaOfStormhold thats a good idea to pick certain things to replace to start, thanks.

@littleturtledove its the DC breakfast really. I was having a orotein yogurt for ease but have switched to greek yogurt with honemade granola. Hopefully thats not too terrible! (Nuts , seeds, dried fruit, honey)

Dc often have cereal. But they also love porridge and i make them pancakes once or twice a week.

We dont eat a lot of bread, hence not wanting to make it. We use more wraps than bread.

Dc2 doesnt like sandwiches as a rule and only wants a dairylea dunker in his packed lunch. I will get some decemt breadsticks and cream cheese and try those with him.

Its mostly the dc stuff really, i cook from scratch the majority if dinners, i dont use jars of sauces, and we dont have takeaways.

So i think the first things i need to look at are DC breakfast - this is easy, make porridge, they will eat it most days.

Lunch box - switch dairylea dunker out
Greek yogurt (both like it) instead of "kids" yogurt
Homemade cookie/cake instead of biscuit bar.
After school - More fruit available as the first option. Better bread - toast? Nuts.

Reading sone of the suggestions though has made me realise that we dont do too badly.

Dc 2 is easier, likes breadsticks, nuts, pnb.

Dc1 less so.

I just need to find easy stuff that works for us

Snacks?

Apples, pears, oranges. Chopped carrot sticks. Hard boiled eggs. If they don’t want those they’re not hungry.

Speaking for my family it's because one of my kids has inflammatory bowel disease and there's an increasingly well understood link with emulsifiers and gums added to UPF foods.

OP: Cream cheese - I know Philadelphia is upf, but some others (eg Tesco own full fat) are not. Crosta and mollica wraps are upf.

My daughter has packed lunches and leftovers are the easiest, along with soups. She had pasta and meatballs today in her thermos, with a flapjack for "pudding".

M&S have introduced a range of food called Only…Ingredients and it clearly states on the front of the package how many ingredients there are and what they are. No need to squint to try and read tiny print on the back, hooray! unfortunately though the range is very limited at the moment, I’m really hoping they expand it.
https://www.marksandspencer.com/food/l/food-brands/only-ingredients

Such is capitalism, they put unneeded ingredients in and charged you, now you're paying a premium for them to be taken out!

Tim Spector did a tv show about it

I would really recommend getting a bread maker, for anyone deliberating. Basic bread flour and yeast can be bought anywhere, (including Lidl/Aldi), 5 minutes to load it up, fresh bread in the morning. Better for your gut too.

Flour keeps well so as long as you have some in your store cupboard you never need run out of bread. Also makes a great pizza base.

easy stuff? Try fruit, or a home made cake, or flapjacks,

Don't worry too much about oat milk etc. Being "chocked full of additives". The additives tend to be vitamins, calcium and oil. You can avoid the oil if you want but if you are drinking plant based milks you do need the calcium or you risk osteoporosis.