To ask for your recipes which reduce or don't use ultra processed foods?

[nutbrownhare15]

The recent coverage of UPFs has been a bit of a wake up call for me in terms of the family diet. Read this report today https://www.firststepsnutrition.org/upfs-marketed-for-infants-and-young-children 😱Convenience is a big factor, but it's become habit as well and we tend to eat the same sort of dishes on rotation, the freezer is stocked with UPFs and my kids are used to having UPFs for snacks. I'm not looking to exclude them from our diet completely just ways to reduce them or reduce the amount of processing in the foods we do eat. So I'm asking if people could share quick and easy recipes that their kids find palatable to expand our repertoire including for snacks. One thing I'll be doing is getting the bread maker back out to make more fresh bread. We are a vegetarian household but I'm not asking for exclusively vege recipes in case this thread helps others.

@Mycatatemyhomeworks

So this is yet another re-branding of clean eating?

Can't anybody just put the dinner on anymore?

Lamb or mutton, is one of the least processed and ethical foods you can find (if you buy local). It's also the kind of thing that Homo sapiens (that's us) evolved to eat.

You are aware that lamb is an animal and that vegetarians don’t eat animals, right?

There are plenty of unprocessed and minimally processed, nutritious vegetarian options such as lentils, pulses, vegetables and tofu that don’t involve eating flesh and that are a damn sight healthier than eating a very fatty red meat.

I studied nutrition at post-grad level and work in the food industry so have a bit of a clue what I’m talking about.

I've tried to avoid UPF for a while now and have mostly cut out kids yoghurts, ice creams, bread products, cereals, packaged snacks and processed meats. It's not perfect and we still eat processed stuff (eg I buy tortilla wraps, baked beans, jarred pesto and hummus, quick freezer food sometimes) but just try to keep it a minimal part of our diet.

Current foods:
Breakfast - porridge, eggs, smoothies made with plain yoghurt frozen fruit and peanut butter (I buy the really plain version), pancakes
Lunches - home made rolls with cheese, tuna mayo (full fat as the light stuff has thickeners and stabilisers), jacket potatoes, omlettes, waffles etc
Dinners - stirfry, pasta with homemade sauces, curries, pizza with a base made from greek youghurt and flour.

@Mycatatemyhomeworks

She asked for non-vege stuff too.

I did the archaeology and prehistory of food.

Entire cultures and ways of living were built on sheep and pastoralism.

Can't think of any solely based on tofu.

Processing a food is of itself not a problem. You mix rennet with milk to make cheese, bacteria plus milk equals yoghurt, squishing nuts to make a nut butter, fruit plus sugar equals jam - all processing but you can identify the original foods. UHP foods are made out of very little actual food but lots of ingredients you wouldn't have at home. Think about a cheerio - what is it actually?

Chicken tray bake
onions peppers mushrooms courgette aubergines butternut squash or sweet potato with chicken - sprinkle a few spices in and oven bake
omelette or frittata with some kind of meat
stir fry with meat or fish

Mealime app is great! Can pick your meals which include recipies and it generates a shopping list for you, organised by supermarket sections. Its made meals much easier/upped fruit and veg consumption/encouraged me to cook from scratch

Can you genuinely not see the difference between say, a decent piece of cheddar, and a cheese string? Or some baked granola (baked at home or elsewhere) and a bowl of Krave?

I have to say, one would have to be quite dense/obtuse to not see the importance of the 'ultra'.

Food does not have to be complicated esp in this hot weather .
For dinner we are eating salads with chicken, steak or tuna and boiled potatoes /bread
Or grilled/baked meat or fish + steamed veg + new potatoes
Once a week or so we will have pasta with a home made sauce. I did an aubergine parmigiana at the weekend for a change.
Lunch is leftovers or a sandwich. Not going to lose any sleep over a couple of slices of processed bread or some crisps to go with it.

Fellow veggie here who has always minimised how much pre-prepared food I eat. My parents were very much against foods with emulsifiers and additives in the 90s so I’ve been brought up that way. Did briefly go a bit crazy for convenience food when I was living alone in uni (and with hindsight definitely agree it is addictive) but was influenced by a super healthy housemate in my final year who got me back onto what I grew up with.

The solution is to cook the overwhelming majority of food at home from scratch. I will do an occasional shop where I bulk buy lentils, beans, spices, cans , pasta, flours etc and my weekly shop consists largely of fresh or frozen veg, milk and cheeses. I make almost everything at home which does take planning and organisation but we’ve found a way to make it work for us. We also bake regularly for sweet items and then freeze where necessary. We have a lot of freezer space and use it all

We eat what we want when eating out without considering UPF and are fairly relaxed around condiments that don’t make up the main part of the meal. Salad dressings, yoghurts etc are all made at home

We often just have grilled meat, chicken or fish with a veg or salad side
home made burgers or meatballs are very quick and easy
tonight we had home made koftas with mange tout and tenderstem broccoli

This.

Today we had lamb chops from the farm next door, with a tomatoe thing made from red pepper red onion garlic fried with a tin of tomatoes and a tin of green lentils. Pretty good but I then ruined it by having a Fab ice lolly 🙂

A peanut butter like Biona is processed as the peanuts have been whizzed up but the only ingredients are peanuts and salt so it’s not ultra processed. Brands like Jif and skippy are ultra processed as the fats have been kicked around with and other weird stuff added. Processed is generally not the end of the world. It’s the ultra-processed, where they’ve used messed around with oils and weird additives/flavourings etc that are the big problem. Just check the ingredients list

Oatly barista has to be one of the worst. I was shocked reading the ingredients.

A brand like pip and and nut is only peanuts, compared to lots of brands that contain 10 ingredients and are ultra processed.

We slow roast a lot of stuff, saves time and energy and much quicker to cook if you don’t have long. Google Nigella Lawson moonblush tomatoes. You cook veg on a high heat for about 30 mins, then turn oven off, and it’ll cook in residual heat during the day. Then you have roasted veg ready to make into soup, curry, pasta sauce in the eve. You can cook for more than one meal too.

That initial report is fascinating OP

Most emulsifiers, stabilisers and preservatives mess with the gut microbiome.

i think the people here who are scoffing about it being a fad or a form of orthorexia have not been following the very big leaps forward that were made during covid in our understanding of the very close relationship between the state of the microbiome and inflammation in the body, and the relationship between inflammation and all sorts of physical and even mental health conditions. They are calling the gut a newly discovered organ. It’s a whole different way of conceptualising the body and its health - a much more complex one that will take a huge amount of research to get to grips with.

but we do know already that ultra processed foods - those containing lab ingredients not kitchen ingredients, and refined oils especially palm oil - destroy the balance of bacteria in our gut.

it’s not about losing weight or avoiding sugar or carbs or any of that shit - or even ethics or environmentalism or animal cruelty. it’s about not destroying this new ‘organ’ so that it can’t carry out an incredibly complex series of interactions which appear to be crucial to the proper functioning of all the major systems of our bodies, including our minds.

in the meantime, the food industry - one of the most ethically contemptible industries in the world, if you care about that kind of thing - will continue to tell us that ‘low fat’ and ‘sugar free’ is healthy, to distract us from the microbiome-killing gums and mono-diglycerides etc that they already know are associated with poorer health.
and they will ensure that the government continues to fail to act on the growing body of evidence, and work their arses off to ensure that the rest of us don’t put two and two together and realise that we are, though the nhs, subsidising the food industry to make massive profits from low income families, who are the greatest consumers of UPFs, and the greatest victims of the food industry in terms of the price paid in poor health and lower life expectancies.

We don't use much ultra processed food.
Plain full fat Greek yog and berries and chia for breakfasts, various salad for lunch with eggs/ chickpeas/ lentils to bulk it out and things like baked potato and rice or roasted veg with fish/ chicken/ greens for dinner. Curries are made from spices/ home made pastes, with coconut milk or tinned tomatoes.
Snacks are nuts or veg sticks and hummus or a block of cheddar.
Pudding is 2 squares of dark choc, not the best but not as full of shite as Cadbury for example.
Drinks - we have a soda stream and I keep slices of orange/ lemon/ lime in the freezer for flavour.
Weekends we'll have a supermarket pizza or a takeaway once a week so that will be UPF and terrible for us, for balance 😂
I'll keep a loaf of good sourdough in the freezer for Saturday brunches - eggs and avo on toast. Will buy bacon maybe once every couple of months or have it if we eat out - I love bacon and sausages as a treat!

Well said, you're behind the curve if you've not understood how gut health affects every area of health in the body. However, whilst I'm sure palm oil isn't great, it's seed oils that are the worst offenders for disrupting gut health. Excessive omega 6 in the diet.

You have a degree in archaeology and anthropology?

That surprises me.

Most people who avoid dairy consume a lot of UPF. Oat milk, soya milk, all that stuff that's supposed to be 'good' for you is full of crap.

Just read labels if you buy things in jars or packets. Buy your bread from the baker, not the supermarket

@Frenchfancy that's what I thought! Delia smith is another good person to look at: her recipes are generally simple and use basic unprocessed ingredients like this is I think.. www.deliaonline.com/recipes/international/european/french/cherry-and-almond-crunchies

It’s not new! The UPFs are new.

Sugar as an ingredient isn't a UPF. It is just processed.