Ultra-Highly Processed Foods

[TheRealMBJ]

At risk of sounding defensive here but I almost always cook from scratch and very seldom resort to pre-prepared or oven dinners (,maybe once a month)

However, all of this talk recently that demonises Ultra-processed foods is another stick to beat working mothers with.

Sometimes I feel something has to give and I can't always plan, shop, execute a fully cooked from scratch meal every night of the week.

YABU - Get your Arese into Gear woman and organise your life

YANBU - this is just another way to make woman feel guilty. Get the fish fingers out!

I was ahead of the curve & knew about this 2 years ago as my friend was doing her MSc dissertation on her relationship with food & she shared her research with me.

I went as UPF free as possible & there were positive changes; I started to lose weight & my taste buds changed (I tasted foods more) within a month.
But it’s like any addiction, as soon as you fall off the wagon, it’s extremely difficult to get back on it. & that’s really where I am now tbh.
I still try & stay as UPF free as possible within reason, but I have fibro & get migraines, so sometimes it’s an achievement to shove something in the oven rather than get a takeaway.

it’s not a stick to beat you with. If they knew about this & did nothing, that would be totally irresponsible. Education is so important.
Its the food companies & our governments at fault.
Do as much as you can do & don’t feel guilty; we’re all just trying to do our best at the end of the day.

One thing that scares me though is the move to sweeteners from sugar. Yes, sugar is bad for us, but my body has an extreme reaction to sweeteners, especially in drinks, & that tells me everything I need to know about them. As bad as sugar is, a few sips of a drink with just sugar does not make my gums blow up & give me migraine. But sweeteners do that. I’ve drink water exclusively for years now, so I suspect that I’m sensitive, but regardless, that’s not a good sign.

I think the problem when talking low fat or low carb is what you substitute the fat or carb with. Remove a macro and put junk in it, both low fat or low carb fail to improve health.
The winning aspect of a low carb or low fat is that in the early days of the diet, people are forced to cook from scratch and remove the UPFs since they mostly have a combination of both.

I was listening to the ZOE podcast about snacking. Fascinating that only 10% of French snack. It is true, you never see people eating in the streets whilst walking or carrying around food in their bags or cars. Kids stop having an after school snack around the age of 14 and dinner is never before 7 pm, yet they survive. You are judged if you snack. No French office has biscuits in the office kitchen.

I live in Australia and people here eat all day long. You go to a sport event, parents come with a massive esky filled with the worst possible junk. School canteen the same. UPFs are the stars of the menu.

I can always tell an Aussie from a French in New Caledonia, because the Aussie will unpack junk food, the French a book. Family size of Doritos or some other snacks. There seems to be this inability to go between one meal to the other without food and that food is UPF. Or TV requiring something. Why?

The worst is the baby junk food. From melty puffs, baby crisps (why the hell do you give crisps to a baby, it is party food in France!! and party food is fine at partie) , rusks, rice cakes, "veggie" straw .... kids are hooked before they can walk or talk.

I have been here for years, but the food quality is so bad and so industrial. They eat crap without realising it. The bread is the worst. You can use a supermarket loaf if you forget your volleyball. Use a French traditional bread, and you break our hand.

I find it amusing how bread and carb is demonised in Australia and other Anglo-Saxon countries. The higher the carb hate, the higher the weight. If you take a walk in a French city, you will see very slender women eating croissant at a cafe or in Italy, eating pasta. The difference is the quality of food.

Reading the book leaves you with a bad taste, so hopefully it will change people's perspective on what to feed their kids.

All the healthy food guides have said very long said should replace fats or low nutrition but high calorie substances (like sugar) with more high fibre foods, specifically vegetables, fruits & whole grains.

@Raggletagglegypsy, well that's lucky about your son, as I've witnessed children who aren't allowed junk food gorge themselves when unsupervised at parties, and be sick everywhere. That's including a child who brought his own food, but didn't eat it! Re the vegan thing, no it wouldn't be acceptable, BUT it is really easy these days for a party host/party venues to offer vegan alternatives so vegan children don't feel left out. There's absolutely no need for a vegan to bring their own food. A lot of vegan food is UPF anyway.

I meant to ask, how do you fit it all in with working? That's the bit I would find really hard. I cook from scratch most days, but I do find it harder when I've been on my feet for 12 hours. I'm guessing you did school packed lunches rather than dinners? Genuinely fascinated!

And yes @Cormoran I agree with everything you say about the French! I lived in France for a while, and the attitude to food is so much healthier. I particularly loved that carbs weren't demonised. Packed lunches didn't exist either at the school I worked at. All kids had balanced school lunches.

And yet France has the most McDonald's restaurants in Europe at ~1500. We have about 1400 by comparison.

France is also seeing rising obesity rates, just like us. That French, croissant eating woman, probably isn't eating much else as it's physically impossible to eat much of that stuff without piling it on, unless you're accounting for it elsewhere.

But I definitely agree that the quality of food in a lot of European countries is superior to the UK, where food is seen as a cash cow and not something that needs to be healthy.

At a guess, as there is a lot of tourism in France, are the fast food joints catering to tourists to an extent? Also, could the rise in obesity be linked to falling rates of smoking? Swings and roundabouts there ...

Maybe, maybe not. We have a lot of tourists too.

I've driven the length and breadth of France and a lot off the toll roads and motorways. You see a lot of McDonald's in non tourist regions and regular towns. They're just as busy as ours.

For good or bad, the younger generation are more interested in junk food and breaking away from tradition. I work with a lot of mainland Europeans and that's the general consensus.

I get it! I wasn’t arguing with you. I was making the point that not all kids go mad on junk if you don’t have it at home. Mine tend to make better choices, unprompted, even though I would relax over a party ring.

I’ve got 20 years down to 2 years, they all eat the same. I get told that my 2 year old will grow up to rebel and eat nothing but donuts, the proof is in the pudding with my 20 year old who eats really well!

Yes, I accept everything you say as a possible risk. I didn't leave my kids unsupervised at parties - they were the sort where parents tend to hang around. By the time they were left to their own devices, I suppose it was (is) really up to them - and they will be exposed to far greater potential addictive risks and peer pressure than crap non-food! I guess we can never be truly confident that we know how they will then choose to behave. I have always offered explanation and never needed to be coercive.
I still have younger kids too - so still on the packed lunch 'treadmill'. I mostly work from home, which obviously makes it easier - I am not sure what the impact would be if I had to throw in a couple of hours commute! However, I stick to the things that I know work and the kids are happy to eat - homemade bread and a small range of healthy cakes and biscuits (healthy is possible, if you radically cut down on the sugar and fat - use a lot of oats and bind together with eggs and milk). Savoury versions can be made by adding herbs and cheese. Obviously, fruit, cucumber, carrot sticks, homegrown lettuce leaves etc can be added to the packed lunches. As I mentioned upthread, tray bakes can be cut up and frozen - ready to add to packed lunches (thaw in time for lunch). I batch cook - takes probably ten minutes to prepare and will last a week. Similarly with the bread - make rolls, freeze and then take out individually the night before. 🙂

A lot of vegan food is UPF anyway

mass produced shop sold packaged vegan food, fresh food you make at home without animal products isn't going to be UPF

although my 20 year old is partial to a few ciders at the pub now and again

id rather my dd drinks cider than fizzy pop, red wine would be preferable to either

I know what you mean! He doesn’t drink much because of his job anyway, he sees a lot of what damage alcohol does though that. But you know, he’s young and the odd night out is fine, probably only once a months as his
shifts are so tiring.

I’m happy that he doesn’t exist off takeaways and ready meals like his friends do.

Carbs are only “demonised” here because as a country we get fat by overeating them . Just like the Germans or Americans. Clearly masses and masses of carbs are being consumed.

Those French sticks are skinny and last a day. British supermarket version is huge and often eaten as a giant sandwich or in conjunction with other carbs like pasta. And not eating toast for breakfast, crisps mid morning, meal deal sandwich for lunch, afternoon snack, dinner with chips and a pudding. And if they are the portion size is small.
Intrestimgly I’ve come back from a poorer part of France. Most on the beach were what I’d call normal ( a bit fat). Hardly any thin French people like you normally see. So it’s coming to them too.

Absolutely @OttoGraph, I meant things like fake meat, vegan substitutes etc. I'm not vegan, but I love naturally vegan dishes like lentil bolognese, vegetable curries etc. I tried meat substitutes and found them disgusting!

What I find interesting is how the pacific islands changed to have the highest rates of obesity in the world far surpassing even US levels. This is now mainly thought to be down to replacing traditional foods with western ultra processed food rather than any genetic predisposition
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2897991/

Ultra-processed foods tend to have less of the healthy ingredients such as fibre, high-quality proteins and healthy fats. And they tend to pack in more sugar and saturated fat. Added to all this is one of Berry’s recent research topics, which is how the structure of food is changed by industrial processing. She has found that products using commercially ground almonds are 30% more calorific than whole almonds, and eating powdered porridge oats results in a 30% higher sugar spike, simply because more cell walls have been broken, releasing more calories.

The truth about emulsifiers: are they destroying our gut health? | Nutrition | The Guardian

@lemonchiffonpie

Thank you for this study link, I found it very interesting

Have looked up the ingredients in a good quality dark chocolate bar v dairy milk as an example and quite horrified!

"Grill some chicken breast on the George Foreman for 5 minutes and do some veg."

I have no interest in buying a Goerge Foreman, but even if I did, that is a dry meal with no sauce.

Put a dab of butter on the veg then

Italian food isn't as healthy as many believe. The use of processed foods, while still lower than Britain, is on the rise there too.

You don't need sauce if you use herbs, they can add lots of flavour.

I don’t use a george forman as I like animal fats, but I buy a huge slab of chicken breast or thigh, cut them into smaller pieces for faster cooking, marinade them in herbs and spices and freeze them two breasts each in freezer bags.

Then I defrost them in the fridge the night before I want to use them.

Takes a little planning, but then you’ve got a really fast meal. Boil/steam some vegetables, boil some rice while then chicken is cooking. You can add some yogurt, coconut milk or a tin of tomatoes to the meat if you want a sauce.

There are lots of options for cooking good food fast.

(I know lots of people don’t have working freezers, or can’t afford the outlay for the herbs and spices, just pointing out it doesn’t have to be bland).

"I know lots of people don’t have working freezers"

Yes, I've just got one shelf.
I think tips and tricks for healthy fast meals and meal prep would go quite some way to help us stop our dependency on ready meals.
At least for those of us who find '20 minute meals' way too long to be preparing food that I will eat in 5 minutes.