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?

@IAmADancer this is amazing. What about sauces and condiments, do you just do without or make your own? Do you still eat processed foods just not UPFs?

You said “outside the UK”, hence my response.

I know this wasn't meant for me but it's not hard if you don't eat a British diet. I wasnt brought up on a British diet and didn't eat baked beans until I was 40. I ate beans!

@FangedFrisbee of course. My dad died of bowel cancer 8 months ago.

My point is though that there is evidence that crap food doesn’t help and so I am trying to make sure I am eating well as assume I might potentially have a higher risk after losing a parent to it.

Yes sorry, I was saying butter because that's just what we call it. But I mean clover spread which (as I've just looked up) is oil, buttermilk, water and salt, plus some flavourings and colourings. And for baking I use the stork baking stuff which has more ingredients. We don't buy real butter really, too expensive.

@maybein2022 we’ve got them all out. So Instead of honey to sweeten things I roast apples and blend them into a purée. Mayo we make our own and also we don’t really use it that much. We eat lots of legumes, which you can buy and soak overnight, instead of pasta for example. If we want bread we make our own but we don’t really eat that much.

I make tomato sauces from scratch, pesto etc and just make big batches that I can portion into Tupperware and hung in the freezer.

I did think it was a mad undertaking at first but actually it’s fine. I didn’t realise how much the ultra processed food affected me. I think in 10 years time we’ll understand the damage these foods have done to everyone, which is terrifying

This is one of my favourite, most hilariously inaccurate MN claims about how the UK is uniquely awful at everything ever.

Bread
The odd can of fizzy drink

Things I eat every week: Sliced bread, biscuits, squash, hot chocolate
Things I eat most weeks: baked beans, bagels, fish fingers, garlic bread, tortilla wraps, pizza, sauces (e.g. mayonnaise, sweet chilli, hoisin), crisps.
My children eat a lot more than I do, because they eat things like sausages laughing cow dippers, breaded chicken, filled pasta, breakfast cereals, yoghurt drinks, flavoured yoghurts.
I listened to the podcast Chris and Zand did last year/year before (can't remember exactly) and did try to make some changes, but it is so difficult with picky children and busy jobs.

@IAmADancer can I ask what you eat in a typical day? Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

It's very interesting I'd like to at least try to see if I felt different. But it's hard to imagine cutting out everything.

I will be less convinced that this is the latest food moral panic when I start seeing men talking about how they're giving up their very limited free time to make every ingredient from scratch for their family rather than it just being yet another thing that women are supposed to do. Clearly cutting down on processed food is nothing but good, but I think the current encouragement to do it in a purity test way is as suspect as all the previous diet fads that have rested on the idea of 'good' and 'naughty' food

Loads. If I didn’t have to work I would cook from scratch a lot more as it’s something I’m all too conscious of, but as a single parent with a busy stressful job and a disability I’m afraid a LOT of our diet is in this category sadly.

@IAmADancer interesting. I too would love to see a typical day. I think we personally as a family will be trying to cut down rather than out. Is pasta UPF? I thought just processed. Or have you cut out even processed foods?

I think I’m going to try and cut out some of our worst offenders. Tonight’s dinner is pretty good. Roast chicken, salad, cheese, bread from a bakery.

Has anyone got any easy ones to swap out? I’m thinking maybe spread for real butter, for example?

Absolutely.

And someone mentioned bananas!

These foods are NOT UHPF.

@Starintheshow so today I made:

breakfast - steel cut oats with whole milk, roasted apple compote, nuts and seeds.
I also had some egg muffins I had made yesterday with pea and feta (they are basically a frittata but you cook it in a muffin case)

Lunch - Garlic and rosemary roast turkey strips. Left over carrot salad and rocket leaves with feta, some olives

dinner - Cooked a half side of salmon with lemon and dill (will also have for lunch tomorrow and next day).
Aubergine, feta, pine nut and mint salad
Eastern spice roast carrot salad
Courgette, asparagus and Parmesan salad
Roasted brussel sprouts with Parmesan and garlic.

I also had some 90% dark chocolate and an apple. Plus I drink kefir everyday. I also had macadamia nuts and some cashews.

the salads I have made in big bowls so it’s there for during the week.

Whats interesting is how much my appetite has decreased eating so many vegetables/grains etc. I don’t eat till around 11am now most mornings as I’m just not hungry. So I make breakfast for everyone else.

All sounds lovely.

I can well believe you'd be less hungry because when I've eaten clean and low carb I'm definitely fuller for longer.

I listened to the radio series Dr’s Chris and Xand made about this and it was fascinating.

Ultra high processed foods must be terrible for our bodies. I think that’s pretty obvious. What shocked me was just how great a proportion of the UK/US diet are made up of these foods.

I realised I ate nothing like the proportion claimed in these studies. Although by no means intentionally avoid them.

Although raised mostly in the UK, I have a Provencal mother and it appears she has hugely influenced my way of eating and thinking about food. We just don’t buy or eat processed foods in the same quantity because our eating habits are ‘Frencher.’

We probably eat/ drink stuff other families would judge us for. I drink red wine (not much, in what my mum calls a ‘Swiss glass’) almost every day. We eat loads of bread. We don’t watch our fat intake at all.

That having been said, the other thing I think French women are better at than their Anglo-Saxon sisters is not taking on the whiff of burning martyr regarding their parenting choices. So if my kids eat forty seven marshmallows for breakfast one day, so what?! I’m certainly accepting this as another stick for busy (let’s face it) mothers to beat themselves with.

I explained further down but I do think the typical British diet is horrible, sorry. And I find it ridiculous that people say vegetarian food is full of crap. Vegetarian fake meat maybe. But that's not typical veggie food.

That said, I don't think half the things listed here are UPF. Since when is olive oil UPF?

Too much! More processed than fresh unfortunately.

Surely what you meant to say was that the bulk of a veggie diet should be, well vegetables? These places do have 'fake meat', yes, but as a topping.
Not replacing a meat centred dish, like for like.

Which is what UK 'vegetarian' options tend to be. Plant burgers and veggie sausages being prime examples.

60% of UK calories come from UPF so this thread is not representative of real life.
Zoe's take on processed food

Peanut butter, sunpat is highly processed, whole nut with just peanuts and maybe salt is processed. You probably have to go to the USA to find UPF peanut butter.

Yes, thank you!

Mostly, we eat almost no ultra processed foods. Most meals are vegetables, with a starch like potatoes (regular/sweet), quinoa, brown rice, and a quality non-fake meat protein (fish, turkey, chicken, and venison, beef once a month or so). We have tofu/tempeh 2x a week. Processed foods we do eat: sourdough bread, muesli, organic pasta , organic hot dogs, organic condiments. If I want junk food like chocolate or chips, I go to Whole Foods (still junk, but fewer added chemicals/crap). I make popcorn for the kids at home. Make my own chicken/fish fingers/ and beef/salmon burgers.

I stopped eating all that fake meat veggie stuff 15 years ago when it appeared on the shelves back home. The one thing I 100% stay away from are the ultra-processed inflammatory plant oils (canola, rapeseed, safflower, etc…).

i don’t keep any ice cream, sweets, pastries etc.. in the house but when we’re out on the weekends or traveling, we’ll have the odd ice cream, quality pastry, or something. They can have whatever they want at birthday parties/play dates. We eat out 1x a month max. I bring lunch to work or grab a grocery store salad.

yes, cooking is a lot of work cooking, but food is so central to our overall health, how feel and live day to day, I figure if I can instil
good eating habits in them now, they don’t have to think about this stuff when they’re adults. My parents very much cooked the same way.

This is completely untrue. ‘Fake meat’ was actually a Buddhist invention in China to accommodate meat eating guests at Buddhist temples and to be as welcoming as possible within their vegan diet. China has long produced ‘fake meat’ and fish/ prawns etc as have lots of counties in SE Asia. This dates back centuries.

How is honey ultra processed?