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 don't think it's a 'stick to beat working mothers with', it's just research and it shows the truth. Society can do with it as it will. If you feel demonised then it is society that's the problem. Don't berate the fact that the research is being done and we are learning more about the foods we eat - that's a good thing.

@Stickybackplasticbear You need to read the book honestly - I think it would shock you and give you a different perspective (I thought the same as you)

I can assure you they do not. Not the ones I drink - I check extremely carefully as I avoid all seed oils.

Yes, and I remember some years back on a documentary on obesity that demonstrated food deserts that Giles Yeo showed how the calories from UPFs were more readily absordbed, so effectively you got more calories from the UPF meal than from a calorifically equal unprocessed or minimally processed one.

*absorbed (by the body)

I would be careful. My A1C is 5.2% /32 so quite a way off pre diabetic but my cgm showed I still spiked to the diabetic range (11 mmol) after eating porridge with full fat milk. Oat milk will be worse ad it is more refined. Fats will blunt the spike but will keep the glucose higher for longer so will make A1C worse. Some people (especially peri women) cannot handle eating too many carbs.

I don't think this is the only reason by any stretch of the imagination, but for a family of 4, 70p per day is £2.80 per day, which makes £19.60 a week, which adds up to £1000 per year. £20 a week is quite a difference to a family's food shop if they're struggling for cash.

And obviously no one can actually eat just a pat of butter per day whereas you certainly could eat 200g of supermarket chocolate. Neither would be a good idea or make you feel good though.

And actually if you wanted to cut the cost down you could get 400g of custard creams from Asda for 65p, which is 2000kcal - and now you're looking at a much bigger cost difference.

It's not that simple. Studie have shown that different people spike with different foods. For example, some people don't spike with ice cream.

This Israeli study, for example:

Diet study overturns all we know about healthy eating - ISRAEL21c

@lemonchiffonpie I agree, that is why it is so important to test your own response to food. In general though very high glycemic load food like oat milk will make people spike higher than low GL food.

I’ve seen this argument on Twitter alongside it being another way to make disabled people feel bad etc. I’m disabled, I can’t make food from scratch however, I don’t understand the argument that having knowledge about what we are putting into our bodies is a bad thing.

UPF is bad for us. However, as the book about it really really focuses on, there are reasons why UPF is so wide spread and it has nothing to do with people being lazy.

Knowledge is power, and if knowing about UPF means you alter one thing a week perhaps in your diet (even if that’s a small as not eating so many snacks) then it’s a win in my eyes.

What really needs to change is the food industry. I’m not talking about banning UPF - literally a death sentence for many disabled people, older people, poor people but there needs to be more oversight and knowledge about what the harms of each thing actually are and are there safer ways of providing this food?

We need to be able to get a better work life balance so more people have time to cook from scratch and we also need better wages so more people can afford to. And better social care as many disabled people aren’t allowed the hours for fresh cooking! Finally, with the knowledge of the damage UPF can do, perhaps we can change our awful attitudes towards fat people and people who develop health conditions.

None of these things are really controllable on an individual level, but individuals can use this knowledge to push MPs and the big companies into bringing more stringent rules about testing. And like I say, even if we alter one thing in our diet it’s a win.

It’s really not.

I use a app called yuka and if you type in what you want it will tell you good or bad. It's not so much the processed foods, but what they add into them. But certain things that you wouldn't think of, like certain bird's-eye fish fingers are good.

It's so true. I have only just opened up my eyes and realised what they add to stuff. I'm not saying I cook from scratch all the time, but I do look on yuka for a better alternative

Whilst I agree that preparing food from scratch rather than using ultra processed food in a packet is more stressful for family cooking, we as a society still need to know about it and the damage it is causing and if we vote with our feet it puts pressure on government to regulate the food industry or for the food industry to self regulate because otherwise they won’t sell their products. No doubt they are already clambering to repurpose their products and advertise them as not UPF as they’ll be seeing the £ signs. The rest of Europe consumes far less UPF than the UK and they seem to manage. Probably the easiest way is to keep meals v simple and plain. More of an issue is cost for a large proportion of the population as it’s more expensive that cheap processed food.

Every so often there’s a thread on here asking people what they’ve eaten and it’s shocking. So many people eat things which aren’t actually food on a daily basis, like chocolate and crisps. I love chocolate and crisps but only as a snack. People eat this stuff instead of actual meals. It’s crazy. I can’t imagine what this does to people’s bodies.

For me, I thinkcthe problem is when you combine it with all the other should and should nots regarding diet.
So to avoid ultra processing, I could quite happily cook a pork chop with green beans and new potatoes. Delicious, home cooked, varied, non ultra processed.
Except then you have the loud shouts of don't eat red meat regularly. Only eat meat from the UK and of a high welfare standard. Eat seasonal vegetables and only those grown in the UK. Eat at least 16 different vegetables a week (or whatever it is) etc etc.
Trying to do it all, factoring it all in, is enough to drive you insane. So instead you have to pick and choose what you want to prioritise.
I'm a meat eat, and that won't change (it's important to me to support our local farmers etc) and I believe in nose to tail eating. That means I prioritise high welfare, local meats with a small travel distance from farm to abattoir. But it also means I will eat bacon, ham, faggots, preserved meats (charcuterie, pate etc) because to only pick choice unprocessed chops etc would be wasteful. I try to eat local and seasonal vegetables, but I also believe in trying 'foreign' foods and new recipes to expand my culinary horizons which sometimes means buying in ingredients that have arrived on an aeroplane. Much as I would love to, I don't have the time or inclination to make pomegranate molasses at home on a regular basis.

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall wrote in one of his books that to be truly perfect, we should all be foraging for our fruit and vegetables, raising and rearing our own meat etc. But that isn't realistic. However its not a case of being perfect or nothing. There is a huge scale in between.
So IF I have time, I'll make my own coleslaw. I'll make tortilla. I love cooking from scratch.
But if I need to rush home and make fajitas and buying a pack of pre made tortilla with 15 ingredients for 55p is going to stop my brain imploding that evening, then I will and I won't beat myself up over it.

I'll also never stop buying tinned baked beans which are full of god knows what because I love them, and they're my guilty pleasure that I refuse to feel guilt about.

As someone already said, it should be a stick to beat the food industry with.

It's only a stick to beat us with if we regard it as an all-or-nothing thing. Avoid UPF as much as you can reasonably manage and you will be doing something positive for your health. Bread and snacks are the main sources of UPF in my house. So I'm trying to mostly use my breadmaker and I'm buying far fewer UPF snacks (eating nuts, fruit and dates instead of crisps and chocolate).

Dh does more than half the cooking, and he's not remotely bothered about UPF and thinks I'm being a crank if I go on about it, so I mostly do the supermarket shop!

Yep. And if you dare say anything about the now well-known effects of that sort of eating they go off! They think it's all a lie, and claim it doesn't apply to them. It's very odd.

It will be the same as tobacco. People will die and the industry will have to change because of the lawsuits. Until then I don’t know why people won’t listen. It’s not just about eating healthy food like salads, people aren’t actually eating things which are actual food.

Until then I don’t know why people won’t listen.

Because they are constantly being bombarded with different information about what they should and shouldn't eat, and because they are used to UPF and consider ot to be normal food, which it is, in the sense that it's everywhere and has been a normal part of most people's diets since about the 1970s.

I think OPs point is that it doesn't feel like a choice with so many other things to juggle. For some it feels like the only option if the family is going to eat and you are going to sleep/maintain your sanity.

The thing about working parents and ultra processed food is an excuse. I know loads of people, some with very physical jobs who cook proper food.

I'm not a cook either. In fact I have the skills of a man who on another thread people are saying might have Parkinsons or brain damage.
However, I'm aware there are easy no-cook ways of preparing food such as making a salad or quickly preparing some veg in the microwave. I think more ideas for healthy fast food would be useful.

My main issue is bread. Apparently all supermarket bread is UPF even though mine has an A rating for health. I just can't see me baking all my own bread. Would bakery bread be better?

I’ve read ultra processed people and we are trying to cut upfs. It took me an hour extra to do my shopping looking through the ingredients on everything and it cost a lot more. I think it’s disgraceful how much food has upfs in that is also marketed as healthy (looking at you coconut milk, most dark chocolate, most bread products, pretty much all low fat or sugar products, high protein products etc etc). I think it’s even worse that nearly everything marketed to children is stuffed full of them, I’m so upset about what I’ve been giving my kids over the years.

It’s a political issue not a personal one imho as it’s so hard to avoid upfs and you need money and time to do so, which a lot of people don’t have. I can’t say I’m loving making nearly everything from scratch or paying £££££ for deliciously Ella to do it for me, but at least I have the resources to do so, and everyone should have the resources to feed themselves and their families nutritious food.

it's everywhere and has been a normal part of most people's diets since about the 1970s

Yes, and in that time we've seen a huge and rapid change from a society where only a few people were morbidly obese to one where that's now quite common and most of the population are either overweight or obese. We're seeing children starting school already so overweight that it's affecting their health.
We're not getting on top of heart disease and cancer. Type 2 diabetes is becoming more and more common.

The government should be tackling this. Sunak's government won't do it. I don't have a great deal of confidence in any other party to tackle it effectively either, which is shameful, as it would be an investment in the long-term health of the population and it would have other social, economic and environmental benefits too. It needs a long-term strategy to try to build/rebuild a culture in this country of valuing food and cooking. We should be rewarding farmers and food producers who don't produce ultra high processed food and making life difficult for the multinationals who do. Every child should learn to cook a few basic healthy meals and should be taught the basics of nutrition, food safety and how to budget. School dinners should be excellent, as they are in other countries. All families should get support with bringing up their children, for lots of reasons, one of which is that children who grow up eating a very limited diet and especially excluding vegetables and fruits are far more likely to end up with diet-related health problems. Wages should be high enough for people to be able to buy healthy food and not rely on food banks and cheap takeaways.

And so on. It's not rocket science, but it wouldn't be a quick or easy fix. The alternative is to see life expectancy in the UK start to fall, quality of life of the poorest citizens get steadily worse, and the cost of healthcare rise so fast it would be the end of the NHS.