Ultra Processed Food- how much do you eat?

[pigeonpies]

Reading an article about ultra processed foods (UPF) and the link to poor health. Not rocket science I suppose, we all know the risks. But today is for me thinking because a lot of food typically targeted at kids ( sugary cereals ex)

I want to change the way my family eat. AIBU to think this will be more difficult than I imagine?

I thought we were doing ok but then saw how much stuff in my kitchen is ultra professed!

In theory cooking from natural foods feels great but not always practical!

If you are already followed a low UPF way of living I'd like to hear the sort of things you eat!

Thanks

@Cecillie

If the same article, said anything made in factory and wrapped in plastic. I cook from scratch but often use quorn mince as veggie in house, would quorn mince count as upf ?

My Greek yoghurt is made in a factory and wrapped in plastic as is pasta for example. I wouldn't call those ultra processed.

I probably don't eat ultra processed that much but it doesn't necessarily mean eating fabulously healthily. We bake a lot at home and eat too much sweet stuff.

I don't really buy much that has ingredients that look "chemical". Cake only needs four things in it in my house, flour, eggs, sugar, butter. It always horrifies me how long supermarket baked goods etc keep without going mouldy. We only eat home made (breadmaker ) bread, by day 4 it's getting really stale.

This thread is making me crave Doritos. Yummmmmmmm

Followed by some nutella, maybe

@Neonprint I don't think it's necessarily the packaging that makes it processed. I can put an apple in tray abs wrap it in clingfilm. It's how much processing the natural ingredients have gone through ( if any). How much additives/chemicals/preservatives and treatments the food has been exposed to. Hidden salt and sugar etc

I eat zero processed foods. My kids on the other hand do because it’s harder to get kids to eat just Whole Foods.
I usually try to get the kids to have porridge, muesli and yogurt for breakfast.
They do have a sandwich for lunch with salad and fruit.
I usually base most dinners on meat and veg.
I do bake them processed food occasionally for treats like biscuits, cake, pancake. I try to use fruit and honey to sweeten the treats and use almond flour/ coconut flour as a substitute for wheat flour.
Kids eat whatever they want at parties and have unhealthy treats on holidays

i think that sticking to food as close to its natural state etc is a good way to look at it.
For example i dont buy jars of tomato pasta sauce but I do make my own with tinned tomatoes and tomato puree and dried herbs etc. the tomato products are tomatos and added citric acid, so fairly close to natural ingredients.

i buy butter not 'spread' as it has a lot less ingredients and all of them I have heard of!

i think if you eat 'from scratch' as much as you can then when you do eat processed food its not as bad.

if you are eating cereal, then crisps and cookies and then a prepacked sandwich and a chcolate mousse then a ready meal bolagnaise for tea theres a lot of added salt, sugar and other ingredients
if you have poached egg on toast, fruit, homemade flapjack, homemade sandwich and then bolagnaise made from tinned toms and fresh veg and mince then you are eating similar menu but with less 'added'

There's so much confusion around this though isn't there? For eg a poster is talking about 0% fat Greek yogurt - 'normal' Greek yogurt has fat in it, so the 0% has gone through another process to remove the fat. And probably has sugar added to it, and stabiliser, to make up for the loss of fat. So that tips it into UHP in my book.

I'm not going to start baking my own bread. Never going to happen. But bread is probably the biggest UHP food we eat. Crisps are UHP but actually (the ones we buy) have a very short ingredient list. We don't eat a lot of them because they're salty, fatty and treaty - not because they're UHP.

Beans on toast is DS's favourite lunch - UHP all the way - but surely must be better for him than a sausage roll?

It makes my head spin, and I do cook from scratch, have enough money to access fresh food and enough skill to cook them.

I cook dinner from purely fresh ingredients every night except we have fish in batter and I ven chips about a once every 3 weeks. Not doing well on the chocolate scale currently about 4 or 5 big bars between 4 of us every 4 weeks.semi skmmed milk, ive started to make the bread properly which is great. I also quite like diet coke every so often.
My 3 yearold wont gain weight so we have been instructed to give her masses of high sugar high fat food so she has cheese strings, frubes and chocolate chip brioche as well as her normal foods...it isnt working though. No grapes made into wine though here😆 dont like it.

I just can't get my head around what the definition of an UPF is and how you decide which are healthier than some less processed foods. (Apart from the really obvious ones like long-life shop-bought ready meals and cakes, crisps etc.)

E.g. the BBC article linked to above mentions sausages as UPF but not mince. Is mince in the same category? And it mentions bacon as less processed, but says it is actually less healthy than salami, which is UP.

Similarly, the article mentions tinned baked beans but doesn't explain what makes them UP. Is it the canning process? In which case does the same go for tinned tomatoes, tinned lentils or chickpeas, tomato puree etc? Is white flour or anything made with it UP? It mentions breakfast cereals, but does this include shop-bought muesli? And so on and so on. I know the basic principles of healthy eating but some of this makes my head spin.

holdontoonemoreday I think of 0% greek yoghurt as processed not ultra as it’s just skimmed milk and yoghurt cultures. Full fat Greek is whole milk and yoghurt cultures. No sugar or additives. I don’t know answer but don’t see why semi skimmed or skimmed milk would be classed as more processed than whole it’s still pasteurised in same way. Is only raw milk ok?? No idea.

There is good processing and bad processing, the processing which yeast does to wheat flour is good, the processing which food manufacturers do to make us addicted to the food is bad

Mince is chopped small ( processing ) but should have no additives.
It's handy if you do want to encourage someone to eat but easier to overeat than casseroled meat you would need to chew.

I suppose all our food is processed to some extent. Even our garden produce is washed and picked over ( otherwise my kids really wouldn't touch it!) It's a matter of decree and how far it leads to missing nutrients and overeating.

Hence this labelling of the truly weird stuff as Ultra processed.

@PetuniaPot

Hence this labelling of the truly weird stuff as Ultra processed.

But I don't think most people consider Heinz beans and Warburton's bread (other brands available) as "truly weird stuff", but they are Ultra processed.

@BIWI

I'd avoid Quorn like the plague. This is how it's made/what it's made from:

Quorn is made from the soil mould Fusarium venenatum strain PTA-2684 (previously misidentified as the parasitic mould Fusarium graminearum). The fungus is grown in continually oxygenated water in large, otherwise sterile fermentation tanks. Glucose and fixed nitrogen are added as a food for the fungus, as are vitamins and minerals to improve the food value of the product. The resulting mycoprotein is then extracted and heat-treated to remove excess levels of RNA. Previous attempts to produce such fermented protein foodstuffs were thwarted by excessive levels of DNA or RNA; without the heat treatment, purines, found in nucleic acids, are metabolised by humans to produce uric acid, which can lead to gout.

The product is dried and mixed with egg albumen, which acts as a binder. It is then textured, giving it some of the grained character of meat, and pressed into a mince resembling ground beef; forms resembling chicken breasts, meatballs, and turkey roasts; or chunks resembling diced chicken breast

From this site

To quote Wikipedia back at you:

The International Agency for Research on Cancer at the World Health Organization classifies processed meat as Group 1 (carcinogenic to humans), because the IARC has found sufficient evidence that consumption of processed meat by humans causes colorectal cancer.[2][3][4]

A 2016 report by the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund found that processed meat consumption increased the risk of stomach cancer.[5] A 2012 paper by Bryan et. al. identified Helicobacter pylori as a potential causative agent that warranted further study.[6]

If it's a case for either/or, I know which one I'd rather! Plus there's thankfully so many more meat substitutes and brands available now {richmond Sausages mmm!).

I like white factory bread very much but I know it's very much a processed product. If other people didn't know they should probably be made aware. Can't see a problem with that.

I like white factory bread very much but I know it's very much a processed product. If other people didn't know they should probably be made aware

Agreed. Same for baked beans.

reindeers I think that's what is so shocking. Many UPFs including things like baked beans, wotsits, sugary cereals etc are seen as normal foods by most people.

It's not a problem when these items are eaten as a small percentage of an otherwise healthy diet, but if someone is eating over half their diet as UPFs, then that will start to affect their health.

There is a TV programme about this soon where Chris van Tulleken (one of those doctor twins) eats processed for a month to see what happens. It's on 27 May at 9pm on BBC2.

I don't think it went well, judging by the article I read.

I think my diet is mostly ok, I've cut out sugar so that's naturally dropped lots of the UHP food.

I do worry about my DC though as they'll have: cereal for breakfast (porridge sometimes), oat bars for snack, breaded fish or chicken for dinner, sometimes sausages. Even with fruit and veggies, lots of their diet comes from packets and it's led me to a rethink today actually.

I do also eat stuff like ham, humous, falafel, packet lentils, shop bought fresh pesto. All good quality and expensive but processed.

I work full time, hard to see how I'd have the time for making fresh pesto or humous in the week

I try to buy food with the least amount of ingredients in it
Everything is processed pretty much so it's unavoidable
We eat a plant based diet and try to stick to whole foods but I also have a 3 year old who loves baked beans which are highly processed and enjoys sweets I'm not going to lose any sleep over it because 80% of the time our diet is good

Although it could be better

Everything on moderation

I find his really interesting, I grew up in a house with barely any processed food whatsoever and didn't actually realise this until I hit high school.

My parents are Southeast Asian. Really busy house with 4 kids. Ate a lot of rice, homemade noodles and rice based things, most of our meals were steamed or stir fried with barely any oil. Lots as steamed rolls, pastry made from rice flour etc. Lots of fruit and vegetables, freah meat from the butchers, flavours came from garlic, ginger, herbs and fresh spices. We didn't have bread, cheese, milk in the house, ever. I never saw a biscuit until primary school, also never drank anything but water or green/ herb tea until I was about 15, then it all went downhill!

Western influences have crept in, parents do like the odd cake and Vimto now, mum's even taken to cups of tea! They also use things like soy sauce and jars to flour food now too, but largely their diet has stayed the same. I still find it makes me feel slightly ill now having more than a couple of sandwiches a week, or too much cheese.

If you want to change the way you eat start with just one meal at a time.

@PetuniaPot

I like white factory bread very much but I know it's very much a processed product. If other people didn't know they should probably be made aware. Can't see a problem with that.

But you said "truly weird stuff" was ultra processed. I don't know anyone who would say your average loaf of bread (brown or white) or baked beans was "truly weird", even though they know they are highly processed. They are for most people basics or staples and not weird at all.

-the first time I saw a "tin cupboard " I was amazed. We just didn't have one at home.

It is weird as a foodstuff from my point of view : just try to reproduce white slice chorleywood method in a normal kitchen.