To ask what highly processed food you eat?

[Lifeswhatyoumakeit73]

I haven’t read the Dr Chris book yet about highly processed food but I have read other stuff & it’s made me super conscious of how much HPF we eat. I cook mainly from scratch but as a family of 3 pescatarians & me who is mainly plant based but eats eggs, I realise I need to look at what we eat & make some changes. I cook from scratch as much as I can but I am a busy mum who works full time so we do reply on some HPF. Looking in my cupboards:

We have:

• baked beans
• veggie sausages
• veggie mince
• oat milk
• vegan cheese
• vegan butter
• Tacos
• crackers, crisps, bread sticks
• shop bought houmous
• shreddies, weetabix
• caramel wafers
• yoyos
• couple tins veggie chilli
• peanut butter (whole earth so just peanuts but still bad apparently)
• jam
• seeded bread sliced
• bagels

How bad is that? How does it compare to others? I use veggie mince to make a spag Bol from scratch but will, for example, use lentils instead.

i feel like most of our food is cooked fresh but judging by this list, we have a lot of processed crap that I hadn’t registered.

Aibu to ask you to share so I can compare?

Ps. We hate are having oven chips, beans & egg for tea!

And I haven’t included yoghurts in the list- both vegan & normal

Oh loads and loads. The vast majority I’d say.

Chips
cereal
mousse desserts
ice cream
cake
biscuits
veggie sausages
quorn mince / nuggets
ketchup and other sauces
pasta
bread
takeaways
pizza
….

Oh good literally everything I eat is processed 🤦‍♀️ I hate cooking and am always busy so I basically live off:-

Over night oats - not too bad
Beans on toast
Scrambled egg on toast
Gym kitchen ready meals
Bananas
Kvarg protein yoghurts

I'd love to cook macro counted type meals from scratch. Make a whole load and freeze them. But honestly I wouldn't know where to start.

If I eat rice or quinoa, I buy the little microwaveable pouches.

• baked beans
• meat sausages
• minced beef
• oat milk
• Tacos
• crackers, crisps, bread sticks
• shop bought houmous
• shreddies, weetabix
• caramel wafers
• yoyos
• peanut butter (whole earth so just peanuts but still bad apparently)
• jam
• seeded bread sliced
• bagels
• frozen chicken nuggets/fish fingers/chips
• fruit juice
• squash

Our meals are a mix of cooked from scratch and beige oven food on busy nights. Snacks range from fresh fruit, Greek yoghurt with frozen fruit to a chocolate biscuit or ice cream. I think it’s pretty difficult to eat wholly clean as a single parent with a job and kids with ASN, I have the capability to make most things above but not the time by any means.

All of them. I don't care. Probably a terrible attitude but I'm vegan, kids are veggie, they eat loads of fruit and veg I'm not getting excited over crisps.

I try and eat unprocessed food. Food your granny would recognise so lots of lean fish and meat, veg.
It’s the fake stuff I’d look to drop. If you are vegan have pulses, the pescatarians can have dairy not ‘cheese’ made out of oil.
I do have some things like kitkats, chocolate etc but I try and avoid stuff with lots of ingredients in the main.

The vegan alternatives are likely to be the most processed things you are eating.
I cook from scratch and we have minimal ultra processed foods, mostly things like condiments, fish fingers, baked beans, cereal bars.
I'm not aiming to cut out everything but I am definitely more aware.

Yeah loads. It would be a very long list.

We eat ok evening meals with lots of homegrown veg and just low level processed stuff like rice. But kiev and chips or pizza still gets eaten.

lunch is a mix of crisps, cereal bars, pepparami and wraps, humous and salads. We do eat homemade soup a lot toom

Breakfast is yoghurts and cereal. I dont think its highly processed cereal but it must have some processes. Porridge and museli

I do try to eat tofu & tempeh more than quorn etc. i do like a Linda McCartney sausage but recognise I prob need to try and get rid. I love oatly barista too & not sure what to do about that.

Is minced beef really UPF? I mean it’s obviously processed but surely it’s just 100% beef isn’t it?

Lots in the cupboards but that's because a lot of store cupboard ingredients are UPFs by their nature. However most of these things are very rarely eaten, eg we have lots of different types of hot sauce but they only come out occasionally! The only regular things are:

Fishfingers
Baked beans
Ketchup
Salad cream
Caesar salad dressing
Malteasers

Otherwise we eat grains, meat & fish, fruit and vegetables, cook from scratch, buy ruinously expensive sourdough from the local baker and never eat ready meals. Even our takeaways tend to be from the local artisan pizza place that doesn't use weird ingredients, and I'm fussy about things like jam etc which I tend to get from the farmer's market so again no weird stuff.

I will say that it's much easier to eat this way if you have cooking skills, money, time, and a good choice of local shops, which is by no means a given for most people.

Loads. I can't remember what % they said was in most people's diets but mine is definitely more!

@MaryBoggintonTrotterSmyke yes time is the factor for me. I will say we never eat ready meals - but I use UP ingredients like veggie mince. And yes the local sourdough is £4-6 a loaf!!!! We have a bread maker but again, time!

@museumum no I think you're right, minced beef is just beef that's been through a mincer so not a UPF. Ready-made burgers or something like that might be different.

I think peanut butter without any extra ingredients is also OK? Again, it's just mashed up peanuts and they are quite nutritious, though obviously fattening if you eat too much. I think that counts as just processed not ultra.

@MaryBoggintonTrotterSmyke yes re peanut butter- I try and get the ones that are just peanuts but better to make own I think! It’s a good vegan protein source for me & i have it in porridge!!

We regularly have:

Cereal (cornflakes, Weetabix)

Veggie sausages and burgers (soya)

Supermarket bread and wraps

Baked beans

Store bought ketchup, mayo chilli sauce

Tacos

Oat cakes

Biscuits

Jam

Peanut and almond butter

Sometimes vegan butter

I now buy the organic oat milk which is just oats and water but the oats are still processed obviously. Still no oil

We have plain yoghurt which is just milk - that's not UPF though as far as I know

WE mostly eat less processed cereals like oats and muesli

Once in a while we'll use a bought pasta sauce or soup

On "good" weeks I'll make less processed puddings / sweet treats from scratch

Is whole earth peanut butter ultra processed? I love it and thought it was quite healthy. I used to live with a very health conscious girl who made her own peanut butter and can't see how it's different? I used to be vegetarian and think it's harder to avoid UP foods as there are so many branded as vegetarian/vegan/plant based.

@Lifeswhatyoumakeit73 veggie here too (for best part of 30 years!) and I got v excited by all the veggie sausages etc as there just wasn't that choice when I was growing up. I am trying to cut down now though, I'll have a meat alternative occasionally but maybe only every few weeks. I've tried to really up my beans & pulses instead. The other problem is toddler dd, who is picky. She actually eats a worse diet than dh and I do and I feel very guilty about that! Her pasta consumption is egregious.

@MaryBoggintonTrotterSmyke yes I come from the sosmix generation too 😂 I remember the excitement of Linda McCartney sausages!!! But they are sadly full of crap so I might need to fully go back to the 80’s & 90’s veggie diet too!

I do eat processed foods (hard to avoid) but I try to 'mitigate the damage'.

A single frozen lasagne approx once a week....only have a half portion per meal with loads of salad and no garlic bread
Battered cod approx once a week......lots of veg no additional starchy carbs or dressings
Faggots.....once a fortnight at mums
1 diced polish sausage added to soup/rice/backed potatoe over week, with veg or salad
Ready made sandwich when I get up late....once a fortnight (if that)

My dad died of bowl cancer so I'm conscious of processed meat.

I mostly offend with things like breadsticks, crackers, crisps. Though I get as high quality as I can.

A bit of Coke Zero. Which is not great.

I buy shop bought fishcakes and fish fingers, but I can't too excited about those.

I also eat a lot of hummus, which is apparently UHP, but I cba making that myself.

Umm I'm not exactly sure what counts as ultra processed. But today as an example, as a family we've had

Porridge & weetabix for breakfasts - porridge is just oats, but I guess the weetabix is ultra processed?

Fruit for DDs' snacks

Sandwiches and omelettes for lunch. I assume the bread and butter counts as ultra processed, but the cheese is just processed? And the omelettes wouldn't be processed, except the cheese which went in them.

Homemade birthday cake which I guess has ultra processed ingredients (butter and cocoa powder?)

Dinner lasagne but homemade so not sure anything would be ultra processed (the pasta?) but some processed ingredients like the mince and tinned tomatoes. The butter for the white sauce would be ultra processed I guess.

I don't think we do too badly generally but DH has a few anaphylactic allergies so a lot of ultra processed foods are just ruled out. I have a different and less severe allergy which then rules out some other processed food so we end up cooking more from scratch than we otherwise might.

I think the key is a balanced diet.

I know many kids that are fed mostly processed food!

I live vegetarian food but tend to avoid vegan/veggie meat alternatives as they are heavily processed but also have a high carbon footprint due to the processing.

@JudgeRudy yes my Dad died of bowel cancer last year too & I am also quite conscious of what I am putting in my system too & as you say mitigate a bit

Lots of the foods you list are processed, but not highly processed foods (HPFs). Even extra virgin olive oil is a processed food - I just use that as an example to show that "healthy" foods can also be processed foods. The real baddies are things like: biscuits, chicken nuggets, turkey dinosaurs, frankfurter sausages (I had to check the ingredients at work to see if a Muslim colleague could eat them & the list of ingredients put me off eating them ever again!). Basically, if there's a long list of ingredients & it bears little resemblance to its original state. These products are designed to hit your "sweet spot" and desire to eat more of them.