To be totally on the anti UPF bandwagon and think this may finally be how I crack my food addiction?

[MaybeIWillFuckOffThen]

Listened to the podcast by the Van Tulleken brothers, and then read some of the Brazilian research and the experiment with UPF/whole food diet. Listened to some Giles Yeo. Oh my goodness. Mind blown!

I have a binge eating disorder and it was getting so out of hand. Spent fortunes a week on extra secret food, all of it crap. Gaining a lot of weight. I could eat 6 supermarket hot cross buns at a time and still feel like I wanted more even while feeling sick. Whole packets of biscuits in minutes. It didn't make any sense to me but I felt like I just couldn't stop. Now it makes a lot of sense why - I've basically been eating the food equivalent of heroin.

I've cut it out this past week or two - whenever I have been craving it I just go and listen to an episode or two of the podcast again and am horrified anew so resist. I've also accepted the fact I'm never going to manage to not eat with willpower alone so have packed my bag with healthy whole food snacks - nuts, Greek yoghurt, chopped vegetables, hummus - so I don't 'need' to go to the shop for some lunch (and walk out with a load of garbage).

I felt much better almost instantly. Clear headed. Less bloated and sluggish, less achey. Less sick obviously. And much, much less hungry. Staying within calorie limits (that always seemed laughably low and restrictive whilst eating junk) suddenly incredibly easy. In not weighing myself as my scales are broken but how I feel is worth it on its own.

Over the weekend my DD got a vomiting bug for the millionth time this summer, bad nights sleep, feeling grotty etc. So Monday I decided to treat myself t a toasted panini from the work cafe. Supermarket bread, weird cheese etc - real comforting junk food of the type I just can't get enough of usually.

Reader it was DIABOLICAL. It tasted AWFUL. I've eaten these things so many times before and loved them. But it was horrible. I literally could not eat it, had two mouthfuls, spat the second one out and threw it in the bin.

I honestly feel like I've had some sort of damascene conversion. Every time I think about buying some crap now I just remember the horrible, inedible crapness of that panini and the urge just goes away again.

AIBU to think this could actually change my life??? Can simple awareness really override such a lifelong, established addictive behaviour? Or will this just be a flash in the pan?

have also looked into this but I’m a bit confused.

anything with more than 3 ingredients is likely UPF I saw, doesn’t that include hummus? (Interesting you said hummus as it’s a staple of mine and I’d been wondering)

A well timed thread for me too!
I'm sat feeling rubbish and a stone and a half heavier than this time last year. My diet is the worst it's ever been - Upf's are just so toxic. I feel sluggish and creaky. I must get back on the bandwagon too. I'm interested in the specific podcasts too, to give me a little kick start.

@1990s I don't recognise that definition - I read if it has ingredients you haven't heard of) wouldn't have in your home kitchen, it's likely UPF. I make hummus with chickpeas,water, oil and garlic, bit of lemon. Supermarket stuff is prob more processed for shelf life.

Sorry yes, I more meant if it had more than three ingredients that were words that didn’t make sense.

To be clear, I don’t want hummus to be UPF! I’m hoping it’s not!

This is so interesting and something I want to know more about. Please could you tell me what kind of thing you have for breakfast? I eat low sugar granola and high protein yoghurt and am putting weight on even though it's fairly low cal and I've just checked the ingredients and, well, it's not pretty!

I don't eat anything that would be a UPF except for bread which is gluten free but this has been on R4 while I've been on the school run and it's been very interesting. DH has done something along these lines with low carbing and it's been a revelation for him. I don't know how much he's lost because he was in denial about his weight but he's now the same size as he was 20 years ago.

Yey this is a brilliant discovery @MaybeIWillFuckOffThen !

I listened to Xand and Chris too and 3 weeks ago I massively reduced UPF and also began making my own bread - it's very very bloody easy (also works out at 75p for two loaves) but then there's only me and my son to cater for. I have IBD and for the last year it's been teetering on the edge of a massive flare up - my home made bread seems to have abated it and (touch wood/fingers crossed) I have felt really well for 2 weeks now. I've also dropped half a stone and don't feel hungry as often.

It's a win/win! Enjoy your new found health!

I think the best advice I've read about breakfasts is to eat savoury food. Eggs work for us - we have an "egg and beans toaster" by Tefal which boils eggs to your specification while you do other stuff! Personally I have adapted to skip breakfast - I always thought I'd get too hungry to miss breakfast but it turns out it was the cereal itself that was making me starving mid morning.

Watching with Interest. What is UPF?

@schoolsweats

There's a really good article here: www.theguardian.com/food/2020/feb/13/how-ultra-processed-food-took-over-your-shopping-basket-brazil-carlos-monteiro

Also, this is the Nova system they reference: world.openfoodfacts.org/nova (quite the eye opener!)

Thank you, I think missing breakfast might be the best option for me too, I don't eat eggs and always end up with cereal or toast.

@Member869894 Ultra processed food.

I think this whole area is really interesting.

When I was a teen we had Fat Is Bad.
In my twenties/thirties we had Sugar is Bad.

Neither of these fully made sense to me. But I can completely buy into the idea that actually, it has been UPF that has actually been the problem with the modern western diet all along.

I've pretty much weaned myself off UPF naturally - just like you've found OP, the less of it you eat, the less you want it. For me, ditching sweet UPF was really easy - things like store-bought biscuits, cakes, donuts etc I genuinely do not like, although saying that out loud makes me sound like a bit of a wanker. I absolutely love homemade cake, but one slice is always enough because it tastes like real cake (sounding like a wanker again).

Savoury stuff less so - I do enjoy crisps, savoury pastries etc - but its easy enough not to buy them, so I don't end up eating them! I do cook with bacon and sausages from time to time which I know are awful but never mind.

I wish I could get the message through to teenage DS though. He's at the age where they are all buying shit from the shop after school and I can see him developing really unhealthy, bingey eating patterns.

And YY to not eating breakfast. I never eat until noon at the earliest and try not to eat after 9pm.

I find if I do eat breakfast, esp. if it is carb based, I am ravenous again by mid-morning, whereas I can comfortable fast until 1pm without even thinking about it otherwise. I think intermittent fasting is another really interesting area to explore in terms of how we metabolise food which is too often dismissed as being faddy.

No, it is if it is made in a way you can't at home with ingredients you can't use at home. Any houmous made at home has at least six ingredients!

Omelette, porridge or fruit & plain yogurt.

A lot of supermarket hummus has sunflower or rapeseed oil which isn’t great.

I retired (yay!!) recently and after listening to the Tulleken brothers podcast I decided that all our meals will be cooked from scratch and they are so much nicer! And cheaper. I make soups for lunches, home made bread to go with (I have a machine, so it's easy), and the things I bought as UPF dinners when I worked are all being home cooked now.

I'm gobsmacked at the difference in flavour, and how little it takes to fill me and my DH up.

I am so lucky that I have time, but if you possibly can bulk cook & freeze, it really is so much healthier. I feel very different physically!

@schoolsweats I often don't get breakfast (start work at 8 and it's mayhem in our house between 6 and 8!) but when I do it's porridge, boiled egg or half an avocado

I have been avoiding UPF for a long time... my rule is, no more than 5 ingredients and if I don't know what an ingredient is or its rubbish I don't buy it.
I also only have meat/ fish 2x week.

My best bit is: I eat a lot less and as a result spent less on food. Which again allows me to buy better quality foods especially meat.

@schoolsweats I make my own smoothie with frozen (or fresh) fruits, porridge oats and plain full fat yoghurt all topped up with boiled cooled water. Sometimes I add fresh ginger, or a carrot or some kale. I don't eat in the morning, but this usually keeps me going from around 7am until midday!

I’m a careful eater but I slip. I shall look these recommendations up xx

Literally finished listening to the pod cast today whilst out walking...awful how manufacturers are causing the majority of the upf issues we have by creating products with the perfect ratio of sugar, salt and fat that keeps us coming back for more. And they can get away with it. Shocking really as they've probably been the major cause of the obesity problems we have.

I loved the bit where they read out ingredients from the packets and said if you can't make the product using ingredients that a normal home kitchen would have, then its a upf. Makes perfect sense.

I was sceptical that Xand, after a few weeks of being "upf and upd mindful" that he was suddenly SO adverse to upf products...I thought naaah that's a bit of a stretch but now seeing you write this I'm kinda thinking it does work!

In the 50s/60s it was very rare for individuals be overweight - we had barely any upf or upd products in those days...roll forward to the 80s and BAM the weightloss and diet industry took off in a big way - upf and upd products had started to take effect. Scary.

I usually do overnight oats with some chia seeds, chopped nuts and sliced fruit for breakfast. I don't bother with any sweetening as I find the fruit does the job nicely.

I used to eat a LOT of bought granola and I really don't think it did me any good. I have a nice recipe for some to make at home that I'm planning on having a go at next week.

Is a digestive biscuit a UPF?

When I was a child that was the healthy biscuit

YANBU. It's fascinating and horrifying in equal measure. I started listening to the Chris & Xand podcast too - I must finish it.

The other thing with these foods is that they seem to circumnavigate your natural "I'm full now" feeling

Yes, definitely. I think one theory is that it's because they don't have enough actual nutrients in them to trigger satiety.