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!

Oh and if you’re not happy about raw eggs swap for chickpea water instead, and make the same.

"Over the years the advice has been at various times to eat low fat, low carb, don’t eat fruit, don’t eat starchy veg and don’t eat wheat, all of which supposedly had convincing science behind them."

Low fat has been debunked except fo the bad fat that leads to high cholestorol.

Low carb/keto is a specific diet and has never been official advice for everyone.

No wheat is for people who are intolerant of it. I doubt it was ever official advice either.

No, but we have an abundance of eggs from our hens. Lasts two weeks in fridge.
Plus I always keep my opened mayonnaise in fridge. We use it within a week normally.

This is so true, we do terrible food for people who are travelling and have no way of eating their own foods.

I tend to carry around small packs of nuts and dried fruit but that will only go so far. I also dont eat bread or wheat type products, my range is so limited as to what I can eat.

Who is going to be satiated on a small plastic tub of salad, they usually have zero nutrition in them, all leaves and dressing and no protein. Or I could buy a couple of overpriced falafel or an egg with a few spinach leaves for a second mortgage.

Oh god, the single, rubbery boiled egg with a bit of wilted spinach 🤮

I’m celiac, I used to have to drive hours when my elderly dad was ill, this was sometime the only safe snack I could get on the road. I can’t look at boiled eggs now!

thats the point, it is so incredibly processed and full of all sorts of non foods that it just did not melt. It’s clearly cheap, ultra processed ice cream. I can’t help with the ingredients as they were in Spanish. I’m

Is it not the pasteurised egg that helps as well. I use the whole egg, cup of oil recipe. I’m trying to limit my ultra processed, I’m not worried about the citric acid in tinned tomatoes or tomato ketchup etc.
One loaf of regular bread / bread buns and a sourdough does us now.
Teenager DD is now doing pasta as her lunch. Where normally she would have lots of toast. I call that a win.

I was in my 50s, had been working all day and just hubby and I at home that night. So, as I hadn't had time to prepare anything before I left for work (hubby left a lot earlier then me and came home at the same time) and was too tired to start from scratch when I got home, thought that I would buy a couple of frozen meals and a pudding. This old woman saw what I had in my basket and started to berate me for being lazy. "You young things don't know how to cook a decent meal" being one of her comments. Though I was flattered at being called a young thing, I was also annoyed. First told her that what I bought was none of her business, that I had been working all day and that I could produce a four course meal, home made soup and bread, fish course, main meal, sweet and peppermints as well as squeezing oranges for a drink and if I decided to have a night off then that was my choice. Her face looked as if she had been sucking lemons.

Send them with their own plates of delicious UPF-free party food - simple as!

@Raggletagglegypsy

They'll be mainlining part rings as soon as you turn your back 😂

That's awful!!

It really is! After reading the book it has really made me think about what is in the food we’re eating.

Have you not yet heard of the gut microbiome, and its effects on the brain in particular - it is where the vast bulk of serotonin is made, for one. The gut microbiome is a huge area in research these days, and the effects of what we eat on our gut bacteria diversity and the range of diseases affected/created there is becoming more and more known.

"There is very little harm" in UPFs is a bizarre statement. No-one is going to keel over and die from a ready meal. But basing your diet on frankenfoods will shorten your life, raise your risk of dementia, diabetes, heart disease, you name it. This is not one man's book, it is documented in hundreds of books now, in thousands of studies. Plenty of interesting docos on it.

It's in many ways not new news that we should not base our diet on "discretionary foods" - but that is what many people are now doing worldwide.

I am not a purist, but got interested in the microbiome nearly a decade ago, and since reading up on it and watching many docos, I have made small changes to my diet with it in mind that have massively improved my mental health among many other areas. Heart health, eye health, remain remarkably good for my age.

But it is linked to increased risk of cancer and dementia - so it's all about trying to lower it where possible. I don't think it's possible to eliminate it with everything else we have going on!! Its insidious, it's absolutely everywhere.

I'm reducing UPFs drastically but I work part time. I don't think I'd manage if I worked full time.

@draxdomax you’re statement is totally at odds with what the research and science is finding

Low fat may have been debunked now but at the time it had scientific advice behind it - what is to say this advice about UPF won’t be debunked in the future.

I agree that keto and gluten-free are for specific conditions but that hasn’t stopped it being advised for wider use. The trouble isn’t necessarily with the ‘official’ message but with Instagram nutritionists and the like giving advice that may have some basis in scientific research but goes far beyond what is necessary.

I feel you OP, i love cooking, passionate about food and bust my ass to cook whenever i can, meal planning and batch cooking but quite a lot of the time it just does NOT fit in with work and after school activities, dont know how others do it, im like a blue arsed fly most days til 8pm

It is common sense that what is artificial, synthetic, full of salt/sugar/chemical is not good for you. There will always be two groups of people: who are willing to go an extra mile for better nutrition, and those who won't be arsed, regardless of any scaremongering.

I'm the only one in the family who would dare eat chickpeas.

Also the only mayo lover. Most the housemates never touch the stuff.

Has anyone tried the yuka app where you scan barcodes and it gives a score based on nutrition and additives?

I found it quite useful in identifying some of the really harmful stuff (in particular in beauty and cleaning products) but am uncertain on how useful the overall score is e.g. it scored McCain crispy french fries as 72/100 based on nutrients despite the additives present but my yummy feta cheese only got 31 due to salt and saturates despite scoring well on additives.

It showed that the sunblock I am using on my children contains octocylene which is meant to be an endocrine disrupter. This seems to be in a lot of them but the app does offer suggestions for sunblocks without this. My exfoliator has phenoxyethanol which is meant to have toxic effects on blood, liver, hormones and fertility.

I downloaded the yuka app yesterday and have been scanning random stuff in the fridge/cupboards with surprising results. A sachet of chow mein cooking sauce was bad but some savoury rice was good.

I am struggling to find out how to turn off the bleeping sound other than muting my phone.

"have made small changes to my diet with it in mind that have massively improved my mental health among many other areas. "

Can I ask what the small changes were and what were the improvements you saw in your health?

@DataNotLore so true re the party rings, haha! @Raggletagglegypsy what will you do when they get older? I can't imagine a 12 year old taking a plate of non UPF food to a party! My girls eat a lot of fresh food, but at parties anything goes. It's not like they're eating like they every day!

Even I let my children have what they want at parties, and I have basically turned into a less wanky Gwyneth Paltrow. They have the odd ice cream or packet of crisps on a day out and I don’t police them at parties or friends houses.

They have always made good choices on the whole though, which surprises me. None of them would chose any drink other than water, (although my 20 year old is partial to a few ciders at the pub now and again 🤣), they have always just asked for water totally unprompted as it’s all we have in the house and they like it.

My 9 year old turns down fizzy drinks/squash when offered at parties, I wouldn’t mind the odd one, but she just doesn’t like them.

@putthatdownsteve and @Covidwoes The thing is - there is a 19 year gap between my oldest child and my youngest - with quite a few in-between! I have always had a zero tolerance to junk food. I just asked my oldest (now a doctor - and well aware of the impact of poor diet on health) whether my attitude to party food used to bother him (he took very delicious alternatives) - he said, not at all - just made him feel special! If, for the sake of argument, you were a vegan and bringing your children up similarly, would you think that it would be acceptable for them to consume animal-based products, as long as it was just at an occasional social event?