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!

Here's my take fwiw
I eat unprocessed food and processed food (tinned tuna, frozen veg etc) for the vast majority of my diet. I found myself getting a bit obsessive when I was looking for a non-upf mayonnaise or making my own and thought that it was madness. So I use table sauces that are upf. The bread from below sounds fine too.

Such things as upf table sauces are such a small part of my diet, tbh I don't think they matter.

When cooking, I use tomato purée - maybe upf but again, a relatively small amount of the dish I'm cooking. Ditto coconut milk

Typical day:
Breakfast- Greek yoghurt and fruit
Lunch - tuna, salad, mayonnaise
Dinner fried sea bass/baked salmon or some meat with veg and potatoes/rice/pasta/salad

It's not onerous tbh

I have however been eating this way for a long time. It also means that I don't need to look at many aisles in the supermarket as I only really buy meat, fish, fruit, veg and dairy (and table sauces 😊)

But I only have adult DC and if they want other stuff, they can sort it themselves. DH has cereal which he buys for himself when he does the shopping

No, it isn't. The longterm health/disease effects of many processed foods is well documented. The links with nitrates in processed meats - like bacon, ham, sausages, hot dogs, etc - and cancer of the digestive track, for example. If your diet is primarily UPF then you are probably not getting enough fibre, and your gut microbiome will have low diversity, leading to any number of inflammatory processes in the body, and setting you up for a lousy old age and/or middle age.

Many moons ago when I was teaching Food and Nutrition I remember talking about E numbers (big issue back then) and telling the students that although the chemicals had been tested individually, there hadn't been any work on combinations and that their inclusion in foods was a ticking time bomb.

And here we are. Dr Chris Van Tuleken? did some personal research on the cumulative effect of consuming an almost totally UPF diet. The effects on systems in his body were bad enough but the effect on his brain was shit scary. That alone is a good reason to stop eating crap.

I must be like one of those "smoked 90 fags a day & lived to be 101" people, then, only high UPF not lots fags.

Cancer depends on a lot of different factors and the rate in the US is within the top 10 in the world. Other countries with higher rates tend to have a lot more smokers or in the case of some (e. g. Denmark which is top worlswide for cancer) very good diagnosis rates.

Anecdotally, it does seem much higher. I don't know anyone in the UK my age & under who has had cancer, but when I lived in the states I knew, four people under 40 who had cancer.
I always wondered if it had something to do with the food.

This.

I’ve finished the book now by Chris V-T. Some of it is shocking - a lot of it has to do with marketing along with what’s in the food itself. And what Nestle did in Brazil and are doing in developing nations is horrific.
The whole premise of the book is blaming the multinationals, not the consumer. I wasn’t aware of any of this until very recently as I thought I knew a fair amount about nutrition.
i’m lucky as we can afford bakery bread etc but oats are cheap and can be used for porridge, muesli, granola, overnight oats.
Rates of cancer such as oesophageal are increasing rapidly in the US and here - look how many acid reflux remedies are around (can be a cause of that cancer) - that’s due to consumption of UPF and drink.

The v-t book is shocking. I kind of thought as long as kids weren’t fat then they were healthy. Turns out the damage is being done regardless.

The bit on Pringles is remarkable too - they are deliberately designed so you never reach the point of satiety - I honestly just thought it was me!

Can anyone recommend any further reading/Instagram accounts?

It’s ultra-processed, not processed, there’s a big difference. I haven’t eaten ultra processed since the autumn as I am trying to sort out some digestive issues and I’m feeling very well.
i usually have porridge w fruit and nuts/oat milk for breakfast or homemade smoothie if I cba, or mini shredded wheat
lunch is usually cheese sandwich w veggies or egg//smoked salmon/avo type thing. Bread is only flour/water/yeast or wholewheat sourdough. Or I buy peanut butter w no added oil.
I do my own baking.
dinner - something w chicken/fish w rice/potatoes or veggies or I’ll do a pasta dish w homemade sauce. Or veg chilli. Or deconstructed sushi. Always w brown or wholegrain carbs.

Where you do get your not-ultra processed oat milk from @JustDanceAddict? I am trying to reduce UPF in our diet (yes, I am the female half of the couple and yes I do the shopping and the cooking, I don't mind, I enjoy it and DP does all the washing up and takes out the bins), and I'm struggling with oat milk. I prefer it to cows milk flavour-wise but I'm not keen on the fact that they are all emulsified and stabilised. If there's a "clean" option out there, I'd be delighted!

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g which make of pitta bread are you using ?

Oat milk is really not advised from a health perspective as it typically causes a massive blood sugar spike. All oats have quite a high GL but steel cut is the lowest.

Hi @elfin79 - you need to go to the shelf with the long-life milks and look for organic Oatly or Plenish or if you have Waitrose or use Ocado Jörd Oat and Hemp milk is from the fridge and it’s the best one I’ve tried.
good luck!!!
tbh if I didn’t have existing health issues I would drink semi-skimmed regular but I’m sort of used to oat now. If I have a rare coffee out I’ll get skimmed as all barista milks are full of crap and I feel lesser of two evils (Tim Spector is of this mind too).

@Bubbles254 - I get that but I don’t have a blood sugar issue as far as I know and usually have nuts w my porridge or in smoothie which negates the drop in blood sugar apparently. When I have my smoothie I’m not hungry until lunch as it’s about 600 cals (I’m slim so no worries on that score).

This one. We get it from Ocado. https://www.thefooddoctor.com/pitta-breads/

Often a stir fry with fresh meat and a bag of veg can be quicker than heating up the oven and cooking chips and chicken nuggets.

Lots more quick microwave recipes this year for treats which take about 15 mins. Makes shopping quicker if can avoid the treat aisles

Bread can be made without kneading if the dough is left overnight

Schools who don't allow unhealthy food in packed lunches are being a big help.

I agree and I think it's yet another way for people to restrict and support their disordered eating. While being able to claim it's all about health.

It's very classist and ableist as well. But then tbh they type of people bleating on about this stuff tend to be.

I would say reducing upf has mostly fixed my disordered eating. If I'm hungry I can eat nuts or make a cake in a mug. When I had them in the house I could get through a whole packet of chocolate biscuits or a family pack of crisps.

Classist? A banana is cheaper than a Mars bar...

I'm now on day 5. No crisps and crap, no bread. It's been really easy up until I made my daughter her tea but I resisted. Feeling loads better - more energy already.

Classist? In most countries of the world the people on the lowest incomes struggle to get enough food, but what they do eat is minimally processed - lots of vegetables, pulses and whole grains. They buy food at markets or local shops, or they grow it themselves, they know how to store and prepare it, and they cook it themselves, or sometimes from street vendors who also cook it themselves.

In the US and the UK, however, people on lower incomes are much more likely to buy ultra high processed food they can reheat, or they buy takeaway foods. These foods are full of additives, very high in fat, salt and sugar, and they don't contain much fibre. It's not a varied diet. We've known for decades that people who eat like this are far more likely to suffer all sorts of health problems, not least because they become obese.

This isn't the fault of the people on low incomes. Our entire economy and culture is geared to eating this stuff, because it's cheap, because shops selling fruit and veg are thin on the ground in areas of deprivation, because so many people don't know how to cook or anything about nutrition, because they don't have cooking facilities, because they don't have a culture of sitting down and eating a meal together, because multinationals are very good at marketing, and because our governments are not all that bothered about our health - not enough to challenge the multinationals, anyway, and tackle the underlying reasons why we have such a poor food culture compared to our European neighbours.

It's not classist to say that the UPF issue affects people on low incomes worst of all but it's a political issue. We should be taking our politicians to task over this and asking what they're going to do about it.

It is far cheaper to reach 2000 calories on UPF than healthy food, which is why obesity can be a disease of poverty.

In many areas accessing a banana is much more difficult than accessing a mars bar, lots of people live in food deserts.

These oat milks contain rapeseed/sunflower oil which you should be avoiding. I have changed to almond milk

"It is far cheaper to reach 2000 calories on UPF than healthy food"

is it, though?

2000 kcal of unsalted butter = almost 300 grams, about £2.50.
2000 kcal of brown rice = 1.2kg, ~ £3 + cooking costs
2000 kcal of apple juice = just over 4 litres, = £4

Meanwhile, 2000 kcal of cheap supermarket chocolate = just under 200 grams, £1.80

Are those margins, 70p - £2.20 / day per person, what really leads to high UPF consumption?