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)

Well. There is a reason why people have been smoking, salting and fermenting foods for years

It's just another thing to become obsessed about so I'm not paying a lot of attention to it. The issue also attracts a similar type of person ( evangelical shove their new found info down your throat types )

Previously it has been fatty food, sugar, additives. There's always a new way to live longer and healthier.

As another person said, something is going to get us all and we cannot possibly cover all eventualities. I probably would add 5 years to my life if I gave up alcohol, processed food, sitting on my arse watching hours of tele every week but what a miserable existence.

Yes clearly!🙂

Interesting. I was formula fed (my mum seriously had issues bf) and despite my mum having a range of allergies I have none.
My kids had a few weeks of bf but were largely formula fed - no allergies, very slim and healthy.
For what it's worth, I think I read or saw an article about a physician who has worked in a very busy allergy clinic, since also worked at the WHO on food allergy issues, and she said that in all her years at an food allergy clinic, she had never met a kid WITH food allergy who had NOT been BF. Basically, she had not seen any kids with food allergies if they were totally formula fed. Anecdotal but quite a strong statement.

There are probably other issues with lack of BF but food allergies don't seem to follow formula feeding. It may in fact be that certain protein passed down from allergic parents to infants play a part.

A larger issue is probably the introduction of solids which likely should be moved back to where it was 15-20 years ago as there is a window of opportunity when infants' bodies build up resistance to allergens if they're introduced. The advice about avoiding peanuts if allergies in the family has recently changed I think.

Interesting topic!

The key to eating healthily seems to be what you call food.

Big Mac and fries? Appalling. You’re taking your life in your hands.

Steak sandwich in a darling local restaurant? Excellent. Product of the good earth.

So tonight’s chicken nuggets and oven chips will become nuggets de poulet avec frites.

Sorted.

@AmethystSparkles I had an exceptionally nice ready meal from M&S the other day that had very very little of anything 'added ' it was mainly salmon , broccoli and rice . I do avoid cheap crap ready meals though- I don't have that many so make sure what I do have are good quality

I also find cooking from scratch very expensive. I can give my kids waffles and pizza for three quid all in

Why not save even more money by buying a loaf of cheap white sliced bread and some Saver jam? You’d probably feed them all for a quid 🙄

Its not that ‘cooking from scratch’ or simply cooking is more expensive, it’s that crap pappy foods are extraordinarily cheap. They’re processed, have cheap fillers and additives and are still sold at a profit - because they have very little goodness in them at all.

Why not save even more money by buying a loaf of cheap white sliced bread and some Saver jam? You’d probably feed them all for a quid 🙄

Woah; judgemental much.

The issue is these issues are on a population level.

you can say “I did A and X didn’t happen, therefore the research wrong”.

But that doesn’t change the fact that on a population level, if someone does A, they are more likely to experience X.

doesn’t mean they will, it means stats show they increase their risk.

any anecdote or personal observation doesn’t invalidate population wide studies.

epidemiologists don’t make this stuff up for shits and giggles you know.

What is food “goodness”?

Sounds a bit religious-y to me.

We eat so little of any one particular food I really don't think we have an issue with this. Same for drinks.

A small amount of everything and nothing to excess as my mother would have said.

I don't think it's worth the aggro for my household to be honest. We eat UPF in moderation, I mostly cook from scratch and we all eat in a fairly balanced way.

I'm not going to stress about a weetabix every now and then because my kids mainly have porridge for breakfast for example. We bake something like a banana bread every week together, so I can't get worked up about them having a malted milk biscuit after school sometimes. My youngest avoids protein like the plague, but is suddenly loving cheese omelettes - it really doesn't bother me for her to have some ketchup with it.

We certainly don't eat UPF as 50% of our diet which is what the research suggests is average.

Bit odd that Upf comsumption and obesity rates have both risen at approx same rate and time frame, if upf has nothing to do with it

Weetabix is an interesting one, some say UPF some not. But my toddler has it regularly and that’s one I can’t get too worked up over- hence what I mean about not being militant about it or saying all UPF = bad.

Yes! Exactly. I think what I was saying before about the sheer amount of UPF around is just growing and growing- along with obesity rates. I follow an instagram account along the lines of new foods (can’t remember the exact name) and the amount of new ‘exciting’ foods and drinks popping up that are really, really not healthy is astonishing.

Eat a balanced diet, plenty of fruit and veg daily, drink coffee/water, alcohol only at the weekend, dont smoke and walk everywhere I can. So pretty healthy generally, therefore not worrying about it. I think everything in moderation and keeping a sensible weight is the most important thing.

This is the type of message that’s really unhelpful. (No offence). Dr Chris and others have said that shaming people isn’t helpful, and nor is simply telling them what to eat (hence why he doesn’t suggest foods in his book).

Exercise has also massively gone down - we need to go back to a society that doesn’t jump in the car to grab a loaf of bread from the shops 5 minutes walk away.

Correlation is not causation.

we have also become very sedentary. I look at my life 20 years ago- I didn’t sit for a 10 hour day at a computer barely moving, communicating on teams and having everything delivered to my desktop.

i was much more active, if I wanted to speak to someone I got up and went to their office. If I wanted an article or research paper I got up, went to the library across the road, found the journal, photocopied it and went back. Lunch I had to physically go to the canteen, now that’s shut and I eat at my desk.

i used to go to the cinema to watch a film, now I stream it sat on my sofa. I physically went to the supermarket, spend weekends clothes shopping, now I do it all from my phone.

so the rise in obesity also correlates with our reliance on computers and phones and decline in physical activity.

so you cannot say that upf has caused the rise in obesity as there are many other factors within the same time frame.

“Dr Chris” - seriously?

Why not save even more money by buying a loaf of cheap white sliced bread and some Saver jam? You’d probably feed them all for a quid 🙄

Try walking a mile in someone's shoes before being an judgemental twat.

I’m not changing anything because I barely eat UPF anyway. I decided years ago I wanted to avoid hidden sugar, salt and fat because if you can only eat a certain amount of these things and stay healthy you might as well get maximum enjoyment from them.
It is an approach that has served me well because I don’t seem to have difficulty keeping my weight stable even though I eat what I want and don’t feel guilty. It’s harder to do that with UPFs because they’re designed to make you keep eating more.

I know 3 people over the age of 90 and all 3 eat mainly UPF. 2 of them have never eaten salad and I don’t think I’ve seen them eat a vegetable at all. They only eat white bread, eat lots of salts and sugars and ready made food. The only potato they will eat is smash. But I’ve also known 2 very healthy people die of cancer under the age of 40. I think health is not entirely down to diet for that reason. I think genes play the biggest part.
For myself I don’t deprive myself of any foods I like and eat a mix of processed and made from scratch meals.

We didn't each much UPF but we eat very little now because I am on a diet so have changed how I cook and so what all of us eat- within reason. Just trying to be healthier.

We've never been super-heavy UPF eaters in the first place, really. I buy the best quality ingredients that I can afford and enjoy cooking so that helps. I have a 6 year old so whatever Tim Spector and Chris van Tulleken say some UPF is inevitable, but most of what she eats is decent food that we've made ourselves. I've done Zoe mainly to try and introduce more plants into our diet as others have said.

I am a member of a UPF food reduction group on Facebook but it does my head in to see so many people freaking out about UPF in stock cubes so I don't participate much.