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?

Personally I think if you could take the ingredients list from the packet and have a good stab at making it yourself from that then it's not a UPF.

So - Heinz Ketchup - ingredient - Tomatoes, Spirit Vinegar, Sugar, Salt, Spice and Herb Extracts (contain Celery), Spice

I could go and buy all that, boil it up together and at some point come out with something ketchupy.

No added sugar ketchup - Tomatoes (200g per 100g Tomato Ketchup), Spirit Vinegar, Lemon Juice from Concentrate, Potassium Chloride, Acid (Malic Acid), Citrus Fibre, Spice and Herb Extracts (contain Celery), Sweetener (Sucralose)

Citrus fibre? Potassium chloride? Not stuff I can stroll into a shop and grab from the shelf, and I wouldn't know what to do with them when I got them.

That's the different for me.

Yes. But the post was about UPF not just processed - most of the stuff on your list isn’t UPF.

Yes that’s what Chris van Tulleken essentially says

So many misconceptions here!!
The following are NOT UPF: butter, cheese, mince meat, plain yoghurt, pasta, basmati rice, weetabix, hummus, baked beans, jam, fresh bread from the supermarket, etc etc

Better to understand the difference between processed and ultra processed than throw in the towell, say it's all for rich people anyway and carry on eating all the crap!

It really is not very hard to avoid eating loads of UPF!

@LaCerbiatta I didn’t think jam was UPF but according to the nova website it is?

Also, for anyone interested, I found that pump street chocolate isn’t UPF. BUT the price point is £££££. Maybe it’s better the kids have a small amount of that sometimes rather than the normal chocolate I buy and they end up eating more of, and more often, because it’s cheap.

I’ve started reading the Dr Chris book. It’s fascinating.

Really? I probably should have read the thread properly before I posted! So I’m glad to hear some of the things I’ve added aren’t UPF! I’ve read the thread now and I think I understand UPF better so I reckon my list is now:

-supermarket bread
-supermarket hummus (only sometimes if I can’t find the stuff that is only made from things that I recognise)
-fruit yo-yos
-chocolate (some of it)
-crisps
-baked beans
-vegan sausages
-some ice creams

While that makes me feel better, I cook LOADS - like from scratch every dinner and lots of lunches - so it’s still shocking how much UPF I get through, for someone who is always in the kitchen!! (As lots of the stuff on my list, like bread and hummus, we eat almost daily)

Of course you can do something about it!! macaroni cheese that you cook yourself is not ultra processed! Fresh bread from the supermarket, pizza dough you add tomato sauce (from tinned tomatoes) and cheese to, is not UPF.

All those things you say are the only ones your toddler eats have a simple replacement not using all the artificial additives.

But I read the ingredients of the baked beans and the hummus and supermarket bread I have downstairs and they all have ingredients in them that I couldn’t buy and assemble myself (if that makes sense).

All C&M on offer in Waitrose this week if anyone interested.

@43and Not all do. I just looked some up on my ocado app and they didn't, but I'm sure there's variety. Still pretty easy to choose the ones without the additives
(although I also appreciate those will be the more expensive ones that many people would not be able to select)

These are the ingredients in a tub of Tesco hummus: INGREDIENTS: Cooked Chickpeas (55%) [Water, Chickpeas], Water, Rapeseed Oil, Tahini Sesame Seed Paste, Concentrated Lemon Juice, Garlic, Salt.

Buying the odd tub of supermarket hummus is fine, enjoy your lunch!

yup me too.

I cook most meals from scratch, but still, we have some UPF staples for sure.

I agree there are many misconceptions on this thread.

Re the hummus mentioned above. The thing about how if you can recreate a food in your kitchen from its listed ingredients it's not UPF does not hold true if one of those ingredients is ultra processed in itself. Rapeseed oil is a UPF. Vegetable oils, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil are all refined and processed using chemicals and solvents and heated to high temperatures, and cause inflammation in the body. Chronic inflammation is linked to a great many diseases.

It's better to stick to minimally processed oils like olive oil.

@CosyCoffee what about cold pressed rapeseed oil? Also, for example, Yeo valley spread contains rapeseed oil and is listed on the Nova website as processed not UPF. So confusing.

Apologies if this has already been linked - Guardian today Written by chris Van Tulleken who also wrote "Ultra Processed People" - really interesting stuff about the "substances" in UPF being side products of the animal feed industry
. Ultra-processed food is part of a financialised food system whose purpose is profit. For example, it incentivises squeezing every last sellable ingredient out of things that aren’t even grown for human consumption: soy protein isolate, corn syrup and modified starches all come from crops farmed at vast scale to feed animals.

This is interesting. What about palm oil? I eat Whole Earth peanut butter sometimes. I read that Whole Earth uses sustainable palm oil, but is palm oil itself an UPF?

Fresh bread from the supermarket is almost certain to be UPF, it's made by the Chorleywood process as much as the pre-packaged stuff.

Does anyone who needs to eat a gluten free diet know if any non-UPF gluten free breads? Am I right in thinking they are pretty much impossible to find?

@43and most of the foods on your list are not ultra processed - so they are not ones to worry about!! Most of them are pretty healthy.

I'm veggie and I eat all the right things, I can assure you.

BUT! I also eat all the wrong things, not because I don't know what's good for me but because so many rubbishy foods are absolutely delicious. Here's my list:

Mr Kipling cakes - especially those heavenly fondant fancies.
Tomato ketchup/mayonnaise
Salad cream
A nice, snow-white, spongy, cloud-like piece of white sliced. (live on sourdough usually, but I yearn for a good spongey white sandwich too).
Chocolate for me HAS to be Cadbury's, despite the recent deterioration in quality. The only better-quality sort I can tolerate is Thornton's. Absolutely despise posh chocolate, Hotel Chocolat et al, and that awful 85% stuff, which makes me heave.
Primula cheese spread

I'm hungry now!

Me. There are none I know of and I do look through them all. I eat v little gluten free bread. I eat alot of pasta though. It’s something I accept. I’ve just had gluten free pasta and a homemade bolognese with 6 types of veggies in so I figure it’s balanced!

Thanks @RedRosette2023! It does seem that all the GF breads are full of rubbish sadly. I love my peanut butter on toast with banana for breakfast but I think I'll try to switch to full fat yoghurt or porridge! Lunch wise I will try to avoid any bread options -- usually I'm not too bad with lunch as often have leftovers. We have GF pasta only about once a fortnight so I think that's not so bad. The ingredients list on ours also doesn't look too bad compared to the insanely long list on bread!

Even the Sainsbury's 'Promise' GF bread which LOOKS and tastes really healthy has so many unfamiliar ingredients in...

@BurbageBrook i agree the pasta isn’t too bad. Just seems to be emulsifiers.

Anything GF tends to be really processed and there’s just no way I’m making my own bread. It’s only me in the house and I get through less than a loaf a week. I tend to have porridge for breakfast.

I suppose GF is an added challenge in terms of processing as there’s even more to make it resemble the muggle equivalent.

Has anyone come across a non UPF ice cream apart from vanilla? I've found a few vanilla versions, but not a single other flavour. I don't really want to have to buy an ice cream maker when we don't eat all that much ice cream. Don't mind paying for a good quality non UPF one, but don't want to be limited to vanilla only!

@WelshPoppy5 Do they do actual loaves of sliced bread? I can’t see that.