If you are not reducing your intake of UPF…

[maybein2022]

… with all the media attention on UPF at the moment and so much research coming out about it. Interested to know. If you’re NOT reducing your intake of it, is it because you’re not able to (finances/accessibility/time), because you don’t want to or don’t think it’s a problem, you and/or your kids are neurodivergent and a lot of ‘safe’ foods are UPF or other reasons.

YANBU: I am reducing mine/my family’s intake
YABU: I am not for reasons listed above (or other reasons)

For those who are more interested in the scientific studies than the people making lucrative careers off this, there are a couple of good episodes of The Studies Show podcast - one on UPFs and one on the microbiome. Worth a listen IMO in breaking down which claims are supported by high quality evidence and which are not.

I'm not reducing my intake of anything, because I'm pretty happy with my current diet and I'm not paranoid about every crumb of food that passes my lips.

Also, some of the 'advice' given on UPFs is, quite simply, total bollocks.

I will absolutely stand by my own experience that I had IBS predominantly triggered by eating a heavy UPF diet and I have not had any IBS flares in a whole year, from over 20 years of chronic issues.

For anyone else who does, it’s worth investigating it. If you are otherwise healthy you might have no reason to make changes and that’s fine.

It is definitely more expensive. I can buy a factory made chocolate cake full of stabilisers and emulsifiers and artificial sweeteners which probably has an extremely long shelf life for about £3.

I can't buy all the ingredients for that. The butter is going to cost me close to £2 on its own and I then need eggs, sugar, flour, cocoa etc

So it's most definitely more expensive to make from scratch. But not all processed foods are UPF. As I mentioned upthread we use some ready made pasta sauces (lloyd grossman bolognese and a heinz one) and neither are UPF. Lidl do a few types of biscuits with no artificial ingredients in them, there are ready made pizzas with no artificial ingredients in them etc

But how do I as someone with qualifications in maths and finance know which processes make a UPF bad, and which have value?

A tub of formula powder bears no resemblance to milk (cow or human) but it is nutritionally complete for an infant and by far the best alternative to breast milk that we have.

Overarching definitions like UPF don't seem to have any scientific grounding to them. The truth will be more nuanced than that.

So again I come back to the age old dietary advice of eating more fruit and veg, cooking from scratch, choosing healthy snacks, minimising junk etc. I don't need a buzzword like UPF to know what's a healthy diet.

Aside from the issue itself, Chris van blimmin tulleken drives me up the wall. He's one of those people who's never off Radio 4 and all the airing of dirty laundry about falling out with Xand and Xand being too fat (or is it the other way round) ugh I run run run to the radio to turn him off!

I was surprised at the range of UPF. Chicken nuggets and sausages you'd know are UPFs, but cereals and bread feel sneakier. Then you look at the list of ingredients in a commercially baked loaf.

I would have said that we don't eat many UPFs, as we tend not to get burgers, nuggets etc. but we do use the "sneakier" ones - granola, bread etc. I've started making some bread at home, in a bread maker, but the loaves aren't big enough to compete for family sandwiches etc. and historically, UPF was less prevolent when women were at home to cook meals from scratch. There is something in this about them tracking how society has changed and responding to that. I'm not going to make home made shepherd's pie when I walk through the door at 5.45pm.

Fair enough.

I think it's fairly clear and obvious that food that has been heavily broken down is not good for people, and feel studies do support that, including the ones which show that all else being equal (as in calorie content and macronutrient composition being matched), UPFs cause people to gain weight more than less processed counterparts.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the obesity crisis exists in a time post the creation of ultra palatable, highly processed foods.

I am open to the possibility that there is nothing wrong with UPFs even though currently I do not believe there is a shred of evidence to support that, and I am open to the possibility that we will continue to discover more reasons why UPFs negatively affect our health.

I'd find it really interesting if you have any academic insight to any studies to support the idea that UPFs are not harmful for our health? I can't find any so far.

So again I come back to the age old dietary advice of eating more fruit and veg, cooking from scratch, choosing healthy snacks, minimising junk etc. I don't need a buzzword like UPF to know what's a healthy diet.

Agree with this, if at all possible.

*It is definitely more expensive. I can buy a factory made chocolate cake full of stabilisers and emulsifiers and artificial sweeteners which probably has an extremely long shelf life for about £3.

I can't buy all the ingredients for that. The butter is going to cost me close to £2 on its own and I then need eggs, sugar, flour, cocoa etc*

Yes - I like baking, I would rather my DC have a homemade muffin etc than highly processed shop ones - but it costs a LOT more. Even making bread is not a money-saver especially with the baking time.

Nothing has changed much.

I have been following a plant based diet for 27 years.

I don't do the fake meat or quornand i do t buy tbe ' beige' foods.
I like looking for new recipes to try out So all meals are home made using mostly fresh ingredients.
Tbe only things I've tried to cut out is sweets, cakes ice cream etc because I have such a sweet tooth. It's bloody hard work for me when meetings are arranged at dessert bars and I have a glass of sparkling water. Last year I nearly gave in and thought one wouldn't hurt me , but a typical desert had over 1000 calories in. It was easier not to bother once I saw that!🤣🤣

Because UPF is being exploited as yet another fad/ grift to cause alarm and fear for poor people who don't have the time and money to make their own food from scratch. And of course, as with every health/ food scare, some people exploit it to make money.

Here's an article about it:
https://thecritic.co.uk/whos-afraid-of-upfs-part-1/

Same with the Zoe program. Scare people to sell them something.

Very weird to start a post asking this, if not for research purposes. Are you my MIL? Why do you have such a prurient interest in what other people are doing with their own bodies?
I tend to avoid UPF’s and have done for years, unless they’re the only option available - but feel like having a fat McDonald’s now after seeing this post interrogating me about my eating habits 🤣

I'm also not sure why it keeps being said that there is no definition of UPFs.

Although it might be worded differently from different sources, it's fairly simple and is vague because it applies to lots of different types of foods and methods of making foods - so you can't just universally say "a UPF is a food made by x y z".

All definitions of UPFs share the common theme that they are foods that you could not make at home. You wouldn't have the ingredients in a non commercial setting and more importantly, you wouldn't have the industrial processing methods used to create the ingredients.

I’m not because the research is really shit, and mainly reported improperly.

@ColleenDonaghy because the food industry is sneaking in UPF’s and people do not know what they are eating, hence Dr CVK coming out to help educate people. People think they are eating a healthy balanced diet but it turns out it isn’t. most of the plain cooked precooked chicken in a supermarket is reformed. You grab it thinking it’s ’just cooked chicken’ so it’s good for you, right? It’s just plain chicken! It’s not junk food.

There are healthy veg pictures on lots of packaging when the item ingredients bear no resemblance to an actual vegetable. It’s so insidious and it is unfair. The packaging should make it more obvious it’s a UPF.

Zoe isn't new either.

But why are they bad?

Maybe they're not. There is an applicable definition though.

I personally think they're not good for people, my vague reason being they lack things which are good for people, they include things which are not good for people, they are easy to over eat.

I'm not a scientist or expert in any sense. But I don't think I'd come to any harm not eating a UPFs so I'm okay with the joke being on me if they turn out to be absolutely fine.

I don't have the mental or physical energy. I have a medical condition that I manage alongside working FT and acting as unpaid carer for my disabled DH, which leaves me exhausted at the end of each day. Some evenings it's convenience foods or nothing, quite frankly. We try to eat fewer simple carbs and more fibre but that's about as far as it goes, and we don't always manage that.

Zoe launched in 2018, and became its current incarnation post-pandemic. Even Tim Spector doesn’t have a lengthy history in this area, he’s a rheumatologist.

So it depends on your definition of “new” I suppose.

I’m yet to see any research that it’s the processing in ‘UPF’ that makes the difference vs foods stuffed with salt, fat and sugar. A lot of me wonders if it’s the dairy/meat industry railing against vegans (I eat everything - not a vegan conspiracy theorist). Eg oat milk is a UPF, cow milk is not, pretty sure oat is better for the planet and your health though.

Totally agree with this. Add in the sugar industry which is now apparently ok as long as it’s in home baking.

What do they always say about these things…follow the money. Who stands to benefit from criticism? The very food industries who until recently were enemy number 1: meat, dairy and sugar.

I’ve fallen out with it all now that weetabix is classed as one! How can something so cardboardy be upf. I love weetabix. I am more conscious generally as I get older about eating real food , I was brought up that anything was fair game as long as you were thin.

I read both the UPF articles. They’re a very strong take-down of the whole idea.

I’ve long suspected that this is no more than a silly fad based on bad science - probably no science - and I’m now convinced of it. Thank you for the link.

How on earth can orange juice be ultra-processed?