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)

Regarding the cancer risk, it may be because a diet high in junk food is more likely to lead to obesity and be associated with other bad habits. But the messaging is usually over-simplified, much as it is with alcohol.

Seriously, what's the point of engaging like this?

There is growing concern about UPFs and so I have been happy to cut them out of our diet. It wasn't hard and we feel/look better.

As pp have pointed out, it's all the in detail. Headlines about UPFs are important: there has to be way of getting the message across, but it's down to the individual to get granular about it and do some research about individual foods. There are conflicting areas of interest that are muddying the waters in terms of published research. The advice about avoiding foods with long lists of non-domestic ingredients is sound, imo.

Who are the chunk you are describing then? Elaborate.

If upfs increase risk of obesity then it follows it increases risk of cancer

I think I eat pretty low processed my fridge is literally just fruit, veg, meat and cheese / dairy.

The items I eat which are UPF I'm okay with allowing eg I often eat ramen noodles at lunch with some veg and a sauce I make from soy, chilli, miso and peanut butter. It's easy at lunchtime when I'm short on time.

On a sat night we might share some total rubbish crisps, again... I feel like this is okay. I don't drink alcohol, 90% drink plain water. I buy proper bakery bread. Cook mostly from scratch. Even our take aways are stuff like Vietnamese Pho rather than domino.

But again - which UPFs? The term covers a huge range of products. Which additives, processes, ingredients etc cause the risk?

Like I keep saying the advice to eat more fruit and veg, cook from scratch etc is good and long-established, but filing massive proportions of our diet under one term is something we should be careful about IMO.

Those crisps are far from squeaky clean.

Unless you are buying the super premium ranges, the oils will be produced industrially using a solvent (usually hexane) to extract the oil, as well as other chemical processes to remove the hexane and refine and deodorise the oil. Hexane is a petrochemical and a known neurotoxin.

There is a lot of ultra processing going on behind even the ingredients that sound natural. The rosemary extract - well that's made with acetone ( nail varnish remover) or a similar solvent.

I went right off chip shop chips when I discovered what they add to the water to stop the chips discolouring before cooking

Obesity in itself increases risk of cancer, whichever upfs were involved

But which UPFs increase the risk of obesity? You get what I'm saying, yes? Some UPFs will be terrible, some actually beneficial (formula is better than anything we can make from scratch in our kitchens), some fine in moderation, etc etc etc.

It's a nonsense umbrella term.

I've just ordered a load of bacon, chorizo and crisps 😂 These threads always do this to me!!

Have been out for the afternoon/early evening so have missed lots of posts- but skimmed. I agree, it’s not easy. It’s nuanced and there are discrepancies everywhere about what is UPF and what isn’t. There are limitations on what’s realistic in terms of finances and time and I agree that it’s usually women who end up with the extra work.

I also think there are plenty of people who can eat UPF in moderation, not get addicted and not become overweight- I just don’t think I am one of them. And for me, cutting the triggers for my overeating is cutting UPF, not sugar, as evidenced my by home baking. As I’ve mentioned a lot- I have the time and resources to do this.

Re kids, I’m not Uber strict but do my very best to limit UPF for them and provide tasty alternatives. But that doesn’t stop my middle one being partial to a Krispy Kreme when let loose with his card, for example.

Hexane is a petrochemical and a known neurotoxin.

But hexane is also highly volatile. There is no measurable amount of hexane left in the oil after extraction, and even less after it is heated to 180° to cook the crisps.

All chemicals have a level at which long-term exposure causes harm, a level at which acute exposure causes harm, and a level below which the body can process them with no damage. That's why we have regulators. Claiming that "chemical X is toxic at some unspecified dose, therefore any process using chemical X results in everyone downstream ingesting harmful amounts" is absurd. The workers in the factory that extracts the oil need good PPE. The people eating the crisps do not.

Why don't you elaborate on why you went steaming in with 'are they the thick and the poor?' without any reason whatsoever?

If you trying to make a point, just make it, so we can discuss it properly.

Dal which can be made by people all over the world in their kitchens is absolutely not the kind of "slurry" we are talking about here when referring to UPFs.

I had a McDonald’s for tea because it was mentioned so many times on this thread it made me fancy one! 🤣

Honestly, I don't see anything wrong with the processes described in the video. Every single bit of the original starchy plant material is used; the processes are scaled-up versions of the processes people have been doing by hand for thousands of years.

Take a look at one of the world's most important food sources, cassava/manioc/yuca/tapioca. It's toxic when it comes out of the ground. It is treated by soaking in water (48 hours), fermentation, pounding, separation and then further processes to yield the huge variety of different products it makes.

But machines…

😂 Norty machines.

I’ve just had a bag of chippy chips!😂

Mu grandmother didn't eat any UPF, drink or smoke and she died young of breast cancer so I don't really scare easily about things, something is going to get us all and modern living is full of risks.
However I don't tend to eat much UPF as it makes me feel like crap.

Like I say, it’s largely pseudoscience. Organic compounds are all around us. You’re made of them. You’d die pretty quickly if you didn’t eat any.

I’m not saying that junk food isn’t bad for you, in the sense that it is of low nutritional value, high in refined carbohydrates, high in calories, and if you fill up on them you miss out on other essential nutrients. What I am saying is that this idea that anything commercially produced that you couldn’t make in your kitchen is inherently bad is ridiculous.

The orange juice nonsense highlights this. Apparently from-concentrate orange juice is UPF therefore evil. Freshly squeezed orange juice is wholesome. This is manifest bollocks. Both contain exactly the same ingredients. Neither is particularly good for you. Yes, the vitamin C is, but the slug of a couple of oranges worth of fruit sugar in a couple of gulps is not, especially not without all the dietary fibre you’d have got from the actual oranges.

I thought the issue was that with the process required to “ concentrate” the juice, practically all the vitamin c was destroyed ( which, let’s face it, is pretty much the only value in fruit juice). Whereas pasteurisation of fresh juice still leaves much of it intact.

No that’s not true. Ascorbic acid (vitamin C) degrades by oxidation. This is accelerated by heat, but the amount of oxidation is mostly affected by exposure to oxygen during the process and subsequent storage. Cartons of long life juice are packed with hardly any head space so there’s minimal oxygen/juice interface until they are part used.