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!

Not all mothers

Would you rather not know?

Why do you feel blamed when
The fault is with the food industry and the COL ? Neither or which are specifically female created problems ?

It's an American thing, isn't it?
They have appalling food regulations and processes that are banned in most other parts of the world.

Gosh I don't know. I never really cook cook. My partner does that... I do easier meals, like bruschetta, (it's chopping tomatoes garlic onions and grilling bread), salads, smoothies, egg sandwiches and whack lettuce in it. So I can chop or boil 😂 but not proper cook. I drizzle honey/low sugar maple syrup on veg to make it interesting. Season sides simply by sprinkling herbs or garlic powder Rather than anything fancy.

My go to frozen quick dish is quorn nuggets, a vegetable burger, bean thing or chicken breast with those frozen bags of veg that you steam with some rice. So I bung it in the oven then microwave the bag of veg... dunno if it's ok but I have a dietician (my weight goes underweight so easily with stress) and they've never seen a problem. I'm not the best cook, so I couldn't spend hours batch cooking hearty meals. Im a bung it all in gal or dishes I can do one handed haha

No it affects a lot of UK food also

It’s a fact backed up by scientific evidence, I think you’re just reading it a certain way.

Processed foods are not relevant here. This is about ultraprocessed food

I'm on day four now of not eating anything processed at all. It's been interesting and not that difficult until today when I forgot my lunch.

Popped to the supermarket and ended up with boiled eggs in a pot (I get these are somewhat 'processed'), carrot sticks, apples and a banana. Urgh! Why is it so difficult?!

Because you are not one of a tiny band of hunter gatherers wandering across the plains eating roots, seeds, nuts, berries and leaves supplemented with the odd bit of foraged egg or insects (raw) or fish, shellfish and meat from hunting/fishing/trapping. Like it or not, most humans are hundreds of thousands of years on from those days and agriculture, cooking and other forms of processing are absolutely essential to keep the human population alive, now there are so many of us. Eating unprocessed food is more or less impossible now and would put you at high risk of malnutrition.

I thought the ultra processed foods we should be limiting were things like chocolate bars, crisps, biscuits the worst types of chicken nuggets and sausages made of ground up bones.
Not things like fish fingers, butter and coconut milk.
You can make your own oat milk but it won't be fortified with the minerals and vitamins you would normally get in cows milk so it's probably better to buy it.

Traditional block butter isn't ultra highly processed. It's made from cream, usually from cows' milk. That's it. Some butter has salt added.

Spreadable butter usually has vegetable oil and water added. I'm not sure that makes it UHP.

It’s not too hard to eat only unprocessed or processed food rather than ultra processed. You won’t get malnutrition :)
so a veg diet is brilliant say you had roast veg with hummus and loadsa salad : great. The hummus is processed if you buy it from a shop and it is posh brand or make it yourself. As in one process: whizzing it up.
shop bought pitta bread: ultra processed so you’d avoid that and make your own

@ArseMenagerie this is exactly what I mean though, I'm vegan, it's really not as easy as you think. 'All you have to do' is whip up your own hummus (or spend a fortune on a fancy brand) and make your own pitta bread. Easy peasy?!

@wejammin its not easy, unfortunately the modern world is set up so we rely on convenience food. I’d take the hummous and bread but skip the crap like Doritos/cereal/biscuits/Pringles etc

This. I've always been dubious about foods and what I feed my baby, and wonder about so many issues that children have that simply didn't exist 40 years ago. What's even more depressing is that food I thought was ok is not. I would love to cook from scratch but don't really have the time, inclination or skills but I will try to so this more.

YABU - we are all aware (and have been for quite a while now) that stuff that comes out of packets probably isn't particularly good for the body.

I think it's good there is more awareness about UPFs and the damage they do. Knowledge is power and all that!

Its a well known fact, that ultra processed food is bad for us and you arguing that we should not mention facts because someone will have hurty feelings is madness. It is just like the way they don't want us to say that breast is best because some neurotic woman who couldn't breastfeed might feel guilty about it.

Maybe when we have the facts, we could talk to our bosses, governments and unions to see how working hours could be adjusted to give people time to cook, for example.

It all takes time. Time, time, time that no one has.

I'm a single working mum. Who says I have to fully prepare a meal?

An omelette takes 5 mins. Three eggs, grate some cheese, add some chopped tomatoes or mushrooms, spring onions. With some wholemeal bread.!

Or a defrosted homemade curry. 5 mins.

Or a tin of sardines in tomato sauce with some fresh broccoli florets, mixed into wholemeal pasta. 5 mins

Or just a salad with olives & nice bread. 5 mins.

It's kind of important.

More than 1.3bn adults will have diabetes by 2050, study predicts | Diabetes | The Guardian

But fish fingers or frozen peas or canned whatever is not UHP, it's just processed.

Huh? Assume you've heard of fruit and vegetables and meat? Of course you can eat unprocessed food, it takes a bit of effort though.

An omelette takes 5 mins. Three eggs, grate some cheese, add some chopped tomatoes or mushrooms, spring onions.

I'm inadequate. I couldn't get all that together & cooked & cleaned up in 5 minutes. 15-20, maybe. Much more if distracted by small children. And I'm lousy at making omelets. They always turn into scrambled eggs. I like those alright, especially with lots of ketchup. Easier to just skip a meal or eat a banana instead.

I help adult DS make home-made pasta sauce sometimes. It's very fast. < 15 minutes with cleaning up time. That's With 2 of us helping. And then he has to worry about eating it quickly, keeping it refridgerated, before it goes mouldy. There's a list of special ingredients to make sure we get in for him. If we don't use them all up on that particular batch of sauce, then we have to worry about using up those ingredients before they go off.

DH & I smile supportively and actually think "Wow what a messy faff."

The post I was replying to said why is it so difficult not eating anything processed at all. I was giving my opinion on that.

Processing includes all forms of cooking and preservation. We need protein. Most forms of protein either need cooking to be safe and/or digestible, or they taste much better and/or are far easier to digest if cooked. I for one would not want to eat raw meat or eggs. Cheese is presumably ruled out, ditto smoked/tinned/frozen fish and meat. Unpasteurised milk? Not many of us have access to that, or would be happy to drink/eat it. That leaves nuts, seeds and some grains, raw fish (expensive), maybe obscure forms of dried meat that could be chewed on.

It must be next door to impossible to eat a raw food diet in the UK and remain healthy. I can't imagine how it could be combined with a full-time job and family responsibilities unless you are a market gardener eating your own produce.

This is a completely separate issue from avoiding ultra high processed foods, which is what this thread is about.

It doesn’t have to be like that though.

My parents both worked full time and it was my dad that did all the cooking for the family.

My husband and I both work full time (I’m away 2-4 days a week with my work). There’s no housework that requires genitals (that I’m aware of) so it’s all shared between us.

I don’t know why so many women accept such a shitty deal in their marriages that they end up responsible for all domestic tasks.

Bread is not necessarily an ultra high processed food. These are the ingredients of the pitta breads I buy, which aren't the cheapest, but are very good. Mostly recognisable as things I could buy myself.

Wheat Flour (Fortified with Calcium, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Water, Wholemeal Wheat Flour, Seed & Grain Mix (5%) (Malted Wheat Flakes Golden Linseed, Sunflower Seeds, Brown Linseed, Pinhead Oats, Millet Seeds, Poppy seeds, Quinoa, Rye), Wheat Bran, Wheat Fibre, Wheat Gluten, Yeast, Fermented Wheat Flour, Sea Salt

Making bread is great, and not difficult, but you do have to build in time for it to rise (if using yeast), and that's why it's not that quick. Soda bread is much quicker - rising agents there are bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar - does using those make soda bread UHP?