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?

Would anyone else be interested in a support thread to share supermarket finds, plus ideas and recipes?
The Nova app is a bit hit and miss so relying on that for info isn’t ideal. Plus it might spur us all on to have comrades?

Yes!!! ❤️

I think it will vary a lot. My daughters school do great lunches (definitely some UPF but lots of fresh ingredients too) but my little ratbag ignores them and orders a ham roll.
She usually takes a packed lunch for speed though

Yes, I'd be up for a thread with suggestions for swaps (especially after being very pleased to find a non UPF hot mango chutney from PP's Tiptree suggestion up thread!)

Re school lunches, it annoys me that nurseries and primary schools clearly have to follow really strict guidelines about fat, salt and sugar - but not UPFs. So they are serving up UPF cereal for snacks, cheap bread etc, and now there's a big push in our local authority area towards veganism too (sorry - "plant based diets") which would be fine if it actually was proper plants (vegetables and pulses) rather than fake meats, fake milks, cheap spreads instead of butter, etc. Given that everywhere is nut-free and they can't live on beans as the sole source of protein, I think it's really inappropriate for small children given all the research on UPFs that's been coming out for years.

I'd be up for a sharing finds thread.
Eg also had cold pressed rapeseed oil
I'm looking for a mayonnaise and despite scouring the shelves of local health food shop couldn't find one they had decent ketchup though

Is it a mayo without seed oils you're looking for? Hunter & Gather do a 100% olive oil one. It's on Ocado, or their own website.

Saw this bread in Aldi, looks ok UPF wise to me? Apart from maybe the added vitamins, but maybe they’re ok too? A bit cheaper than others but obviously not as many slices as a standard loaf

Looks good to me. Thanks for sharing this.

They had a rye one too

Also noticed the coconut milk in a tin had lots of stuff added - I used to use something like this: https://www.ocado.com/products/blue-dragon-cream-coconut-block-83844011?ds_rl=1126321&ds_rl=1164972&ds_rl=1291426&gbraid=0AAAAADi6iHlB4R4tccOy01g9ijMAk9fOI&gbraid=0AAAAADi6iHlB4R4tccOy01g9ijMAk9fOI&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIxOH_9eGI_wIVEoFQBh2BPQyCEAQYAyABEgISLvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds you just add water and it makes coconut milk like you get in a tin but it’s 100% coconut. Works out lots cheaper too. Will go back to that I think!

@WelshPoppy5 Yes! I could never go back to using the tinned milk after using the block now - it goes such a long way and makes the food much creamier/less watery.

Interesting thread and makes you realise how much we may differ in our assessments of what UPF and what is relatively healthy and still quick! I personally consider baked beans and peanut butter to be healthier than the frozen fried ready meals like nuggets or fish fillets. I also feel frozen quorn is better than processed red meat. And fresh chicken is healthier than ham. The flood of information out there and books with conflicting information make it all confusing! I try to ensure we all have ample quantities of super foods in a week rather than focusing too much on UPF. Though we do avoid white bread, white wraps, cakes, biscuits, crisps. By superfoods I mean berries, activated seeds, pulses and sprouts, green veggies, mushrooms, eggs etc.
Will keep tweaking.. but as some of you said, busy working mum life means some short cut meals like beans on toast, cheese sandwiches, quorn packs in freezer etc are a must!

Minced beef is not UPF. It only had one ingredient and that’s beef!

Similarly, peanut butter is just peanuts and isn’t UPF (assuming you’re buying the stuff that is peanuts - several add rapeseed oil and salt).

I think there’s some confusion in this thread about what constitutes UPF.

On the subject of bread, this one seems fairly ok. What do you all think?

Yes I’d definitely be up for a swaps and recipes thread!

Malted barley is effectively added sugar. No bread needs to contain sugar.

I think the most helpful thing would be to collect swaps from upf to moderately processed and processed foods. There’s no reason why upf can only be substituted by cooking from scratch. I think most people can work out that you can substitute a packet of crisps with an apple — it’s finding a different pack of crisps that isn’t upf that is time consuming.
I think it’s also worth thinking about marketing and how some upfs have managed to attach a healthy aura to themselves; ‘free from’ products are a great example.
What is and isn’t upf doesn’t need to be a matter of opinion, though, you can google ‘markers of upf’ if you need to identify it.

Well maybe( I genuinely don’t know, not trying to be snippy) but sugar is not a UPF. Is malted barley? I know it’s at the very least a processed product and ideally wouldnt contain anything beyond flour/yeast/salt but that’s not my first concern. Making my own bread isn’t an option right now and probably isn’t for many here. I’m just looking for less bad options

Agree- it’s finding stuff that is a happy medium! I do a lot of cooking from scratch for meals but I’d like to find options that are ‘less bad’ (for want of a better word!) UPF wise. I found some chocolate from Waitrose which I don’t think is UPF, will add image. Also I discovered that Waitrose sell Gails sourdough, again I don’t think UPF although expensive 🙄. The main confusion for me is oils- so it seems to be that cold pressed rapeseed oil is ok, but rapeseed oil is in a LOT of stuff, and it’s not going to be the cold pressed type… but often in the ‘better’ foods that’s the only UPF so maybe that’s better than some other things.

Also, re chocolate, obviously it’s never going to be a great choice because of the sugar- but if the choice is between one with no emulsifiers and one with…

I can’t get pictures to work, but it’s this chocolate and this bread:

https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/no1-dominican-republic-milk-chocolate-49/518092-707052-707053

https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/gails-white-sourdough/877636-744453-744454

That Waitrose chocolate is good - I buy it quite often. There are other non UPF plain milk chocolate bars too - Divine and Montezuma's (also Montezuma's milk chocolate buttons). Only the plain ones by those brands are totally non UPF I think, but Seed and Bean also do a really lovely lime and chilli milk chocolate bar. I even found a non UPF white chocolate bar somewhere, but that was £££ unfortunately.

I find it easier to cut entire categories of food. I don't do well with milk, so I rarely drink it, but never go near highly processed substitutes. I don't eat much meat or fish, so I base my meals around vegetables, not plants tortured into fake meat dishes.

Even so, I think it's always worthwhile to look for the best possible version of whatever we do still want to eat. Sure, we may be kidding ourselves a bit (or a lot) but it all helps move us in a healthier direction.

Ice cream. If you're not using the delicious homemade ice-cream recipes posted earlier 😍 then look at Haagen Dazs Vanilla. Cream, condensed milk, sugar, egg yolk, vanilla extract. That's it. Easy to add berries or lemon zest or grated dark chocolate. It's about the only widely available brand that has recognisable ingredients, and even then only in a few traditional flavours. Small local indies are often good too. Anything else, absolutely not (for me).

Peanut butter. Can be just ground peanuts (eg. Meridien), or peanuts/good quality oil/salt (eg. Whole Earth). OR it can have cheaper oil plus added sugar, stabilisers, etc (eg. Sun Pat, supermarket own brands).

Bread. Baked at home or in an artisan bakery, better; mass produced for supermarket with lots of added gunk, not.

Yoghurt. Traditional plain cultured milk, fine. Anything added, whether sweeteners or flavours or protein powder, not so much.

Breakfast cereals. For me, processed carbs are essentially a bowl of sugar, so I don't. I have oat groat porridge in winter. But if I had to have a cereal, then I might mix up a muesli based on oats, or, if it had to be a supermarket box, I think Shredded Wheat are the only thing that is just 100% wholegrain wheat, nothing added. Everything else has added sugars and is fortified to make up for the nutrients stripped in processing.

(Mostly I have a vegetables and eggs based breakfast/lunch - though eggs are tricky and expensive to find just now.)

The other thing I remind myself is just how much taste buds adjust over time! To the point where previously delicious foods taste sickly sweet or 'claggy' or 'dead'.

The trouble with everything I just wrote is that the best quality items are also the most expensive. So we're forced into carefully planned, highly selective food choices, and fewer calories overall. In truth, great for the health of most of us - but hell if you're trying to feed a family, most of whom aren't even on board in the first place.

Has anyone found non UPF biscuits of any kind? We don't buy biscuits much anyway, but it would be useful to know. I do sometimes bake using rich tea biscuits, so those would be a particular plus.

Shortbread tends to have the shortest ingredient list - all-butter of course.