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!

What's wrong with xanthum gum? Seems pretty useful/essential in gluten free baking.

All UPF ingredients are useful. That's why they are there.

Current thinking is that UPF is what cigarettes were in the 50s people are starting to do research and realise that this “food” is extremely bad for our health.

Well worth reading the book by Chris Van Tulleken and being able to have an informed choice about what you put in your body.

As someone who grew up in the 80s on UPF and have always struggled with my weight it made me unbelievably angry.

I am trying to cut down on UPF where I can, but it is very difficult as it feels like it is everywhere.
I don't think the point of the research or raising awareness of it is to make people feeding families feel bad though. Surely it is to highlight that maybe we need stronger regulation of our food industry to help ensure that the food that's being sold doesn't contain things that are harmful to eat in the quantities that people are likely to consume them?

I'm pretty sure you can buy xanthum gum separately though.

For your dairy free child it’s a balance of risks - risks of using butter vs risks of using dairy free UPF alternative vs choice of using nothing at all.

I wouldn’t hesitate to use the dairy free alternative in that situation.

Totally agree.
“just a stick to best busy mothers with - come and enjoy our coco pops/cereal bars/takeaway burgers as part of a balanced diet” sounds like a trope directly from Unilever/Kraft/Mondelez. Big corporate just want your cash.

Beat not best ffs!

@Diddykong this is a simple way to make two ingredient almond milk, so simple the kids could potentially do it (depending on their age) Easy Almond milk
As for answering the OP, I don’t think it’s a stick to beat women with - it’s a realisation that the food industry has been playing with our food and as a result of knowing this, we now have a choice.
I have a picky ND teen who resists changing over our diet, so I have gradually changed things and don’t stress too much about the Doritos he eats as it’s a hell of a lot less UPF than before.
Even changing to full sugar coke has helped him see them as a treat rather than chugging back loads of diet drinks.
Life can be stressful and difficult working and cooking and sometimes you do just want to bung a frozen pizza into the oven, as long as you make that the exception then I’m sure you’ll be fine.

It's not feasible to fully cut out all UPFs - even the likes of Tim Spector admit that. Just limit them as much as possible and ensure that your diet contains a variety of whole foods too.

It should be a stick to beat the food industry with, rather than the consumer, who largely buys what is most widely available and convenient.

If it was dealt with at the right end, the big convenience food brands would have to examine their processes and ingredients and there would be fewer of these types of foods available. They would be the exception, rather than the rule.

Agree. Also, this is a website for mothers (mostly), but why do so many women end up shouldering this entire burden? (Hypocrisy alert - I do all the cooking and virtually all the shopping here, by choice - my husband hates cooking and does a lot of other stuff around the house. This works for us. However, MN gives me the impression there are a lot of women out there who do all the food planning, shopping and cooking and don't have that quid pro quo.)

As for what to eat, there are lots of quick meals that aren't ultra high processed.
Grilled fish or chicken or halloumi, potatoes/rice/couscous, vegetables/salad
Hummus and pitta/oatcakes, sticks of carrot/celery/peppers etc (obviously you need to buy or make a decent hummus)
Eggs make a good basis for a quick meal
Tinned beans or lentils in a pouch, onions, garlic, peppers, some spices/herbs, tin of tomatoes = quick stew, serve with rice

Perfectly reasonable to buy things ready chopped, frozen veg and so on if you are pushed for time. Tinned and frozen veg and fruit can be very good and minimally processed.

Re-heat things made in advance, e.g. curries, which actually improve with keeping, or make double/freeze half, e.g. lasagne or a casserole.

Restricting food to five ingredients won't work for anything involving lots of spices and herbs. The thing to focus on is which things in the ingredients list are recognisable as real food and things you could buy yourself if you wanted to make that dish.

My vegan brother used to pour a small amount of olive oil into a tub, freeze it overnight, and then move it to the fridge where it stays relatively spreadable for a few days. It's not an appealing colour, but once it's been spread on toast you don't notice because it melts again.

I think it is definitely one of those things that we (or at least I do) feel a huge amount of personal responsibility for, when in fact there are significant economic, social and political reasons why we make the choices we do, to our own detriment.
I've seen the van Tulleken podcast and book, I follow Dr Rupy, Tim Spector, Michael Mosely. I'm fascinated by what and why we eat.
I spent about 6 months driving myself and my family slightly mad trying to avoid UPFs. I have 2 jobs and 3 children, one of whom is autistic. I nearly had a breakdown. Not to mention the amount of money I was spending on food and the time it was taking to make everything. It was totally unsustainable. Especially as soon as we were out of the house, or with friends.
The world is not set up to allow us to avoid UPFs unless you are wealthy, or have unlimited time, or it is the only thing you think about.

I know people on mumsnet are totally obsessed with food to a worrying extent but in my experience most people just eat normal meals and snacks daily. I think over worrying about every morsel is actually as damaging as anything else. Some people agonise over everything to the point that I’ve seen someone call a mother on here ‘lazy’ for giving her child a ham and cheese toastie, and insist they should have ‘just whipped up’ some salmon and cous cous with sliced avocado. Totally out of touch.

Normal people accept that some foods are processed, and mix them up with fresh foods too. Balance.

I put YABU for two reasons

1. DH does half if not more of the cooking. (He would never had made it to DH status otherwise!)
2. I am an OK cook but cannot ever cook fish fingers/burgers/nuggets or other oven or grill stuff without setting off the fire alarm or fucking up the timings. I find a quick stir fry, veg chilli, or dhal just as quick but a lot easier to cook.

What's wrong with xanthum gum? Seems pretty useful/essential in gluten free baking. Yep my dd is coeliac so I add xanthim gum to my baking!

This. Everything in moderation. Too much of anything is bad for you even fruit. A balanced diet and exercise and good meatal wellbeing will keep you healthy

I am keenly ‘foodie’ and have never much bothered with UPF as we enjoy cooking. I was raised by a Provençal mother who thought British food was, by and large, revolting, so I guess my food choices has been influenced more by her than anything. However, the narrative around the ‘evils’ of UPF (and the implied fecklessness of those who consume them) worries me. I work with some really vulnerable families and this is pretty insignificant compared with the challenges they face in keeping body and soul together.

I think you are right that it is also fast becoming another thing for (middle class)mothers in particular to feel they are failing that. And let’s face it, in a society that uses every tool available to berate women, there are plenty already.

However, at a time when many families are increasingly struggling to feed their families at all some days, it’s a pretty niche middle class preoccupation, and it’s interesting it’s getting so much media attention, compared with, you know, kids who are actually hungry (as opposed to those eating the ‘wrong’ kind of coconut milk).

With dietary allergies and intolerances, the damage of eating the irritant is far greater than the UHPF alternative. If I consume cows milk, my gut fauna will be rapidly flushed out and that's worse damage than consuming a fortified oat milk. Making one myself means that there is then an extra gap in calcium intake to plug. It's not a detail that I'll lose sleep over.

I have upped my fresh food content recently, I was ready to anyway, but increased publicity over UHPF does help with momentum, but I'm not going to sweat over a weekly can of coconut milk or regular splash of tobasco. A lot of tinned foods are processed rather than UHPF and the canning process often negates the need for extra additives that are found in fresh ready meals. Ditto for frozen food.

The challenge with children is that if they don't eat it, they get no nutrition from it at all. I've got an autistic, sensory eater. Not AFRID thank goodness, but there are issues where he's easily overloaded by too many textures and the variability of fresh food. Although the other child isn't significantly easier.

My best attempts at weaning on wholesome, home-cooked food were rapidly undermined by the real world of school dinners and beige after school club snacks.

I'll attempt better, but I'm not even going to think about perfect.

I don't think it's designed tmto berate women or mums. Men and, and often do, cook. Perhaps you're projecting your household.

Diabetes and blood pressure is a huge problem in most developed countries where UHP foods are available and promoted. So I absolutely agree with people who are publicising their dangers.

But I still eat UHP foods. Because it's the world I live in and I simply don't have the time or knowledge to feed my busy family from scratch.

Just because I can't change my diet, doesn't make it any less factual or damaging.

This.

The problem in the UK is that big business is too powerful and the current government puts their own interests above that of the public.

Many other countries have been advising their populations against UPFs for years, particularly in South America. Their governments and health authorities have seen the increase in poor health and obesity caused by the rise in consumption of manufactured food in richer countries and taken steps to hopefully avoid their nations going the same way.

We need clear labelling on all packaged food, something like the Nova scale, so people don't have to be scrutinising the tiny print ingredients on everything they buy.

https://regulatory.mxns.com/en/ultra-processed-foods-nova-classification

On the matter of alternatives for special diets eg gluten free, it's a lot easier to avoid UPFs if you use foods that are naturally gluten free etc rather than manufactured versions of gluten containing products.

So if you want to make brownies, use ground almonds instead of gluten free flour/xanthanum gum, or for savoury pancakes, use gram flour.

For vegan versions of sausages or burgers, instead of all the 'what the fuck is in that' pre-made versions that aim to mimic meat, have home made ones with pulses, vegetables and spices instead. Eat rice and potatoes, not gluten free pasta.

Strange take. The growing info on UPFs is really interesting and informative. Are you saying you'd rather not know how bad they are for us?

If you're a woman in a couple and still doing all the cooking that's on you. In our household we share it out between me, DH, DD19 when home and DS17. DC have grown up seeing their dad do his fair share of cooking. I can't imagine my DDs standing for being the house cook nor my DS expecting it from a partner.

As a working mum, I don't think it's a stick to beat me with, it's really useful information, not that my kids were eating loads of upf anyway. And to the pps that said mumsnetters are obsessed with food, that's really minimising a massive issue that these upfs have helped contribute to over the last 20 years, people should be more 'obsessesed' about what they put in their body.

I can see that it will have the effect of increasing the guilt burden of mothers. But we should interrogate and resolve the psychological and social reasons why women feel that guilt burden, not pull back from publicising research about the terrible effects that the food industry is having on us.
We mustn't let them off the hook for this. The research should be (and is) a stick to beat the food industry with. And we need to beat them hard.