AIBU to be confused about ultra processed foods?

[Mostlycarbon]

I'd never heard of UPFs until I joined Mumsnet. To be honest I assumed it was an affectation of the wealthy who have more money to spend on groceries than we do, and possibly in some cases symptomatic of orthorexia.

However, it all seems to have gone mainstream now and be a genuine nutrition concern in the UK: Why we might never know the truth about ultra-processed foods - BBC News

So I figured I should have a think about our diet as a family and specifically what we are feeding our two year old. We mostly cook from scratch (I work part-time, husband loves cooking which makes it doable for us), meat eater who eat fish a couple of times per week and veggie at least once per week.

So his diet is something like:

Breakfast: porridge, banana or eggy bread or sometimes cereal, yoghurt etc.

Lunch: eggs on toast/ beans on toast (low salt, low sugar)/ pasta with pepper, tomato and grated cheese/ cheese on toast (wholegrain sliced supermarket bread)/ peanut butter sandwich and yoghurt/ jacket potato with tuna/cheese/beans plus apple or cucumber on the side.

Dinner: Spagbol, fajitas, fish pie, chilli, roast chicken, chicken casserole, fish with rice and veggies etc. Occasionally fish fingers or homemade pizza.

Snacks: Organix brand snacks, cheese cubes, fruit, raisins, yoghurt, little pot of cheerios, apple and peanut butter. The occasional ice cream as a summer treat.

I thought we were doing pretty well, but actually are we? I probably need to reduce the organix snacks which presumably are UPF. But what else is UPF? Peanut butter? Cheese cubes? Yoghurts? Supermarket bread? Presumably the tortillas we have with fajitas?!! Tinned tuna? Beef mince? The baked beans I guess!

And presumably some UPFs are worse than others?!!! We're both teachers with a hefty mortgage so we don't have infinite time or money to worry about this.

YABU: It's actually very straightforward to not feed your kids junk.
YANBU: It's confusing.

I don't think you're doing bad at all. It sounds like the biggest tweak for you would be the bread - could you visit a local bakers, or get a bread maker?

Your diet is much better than ours though!

If you look at the ingredients list, see if you know what all the ingredients are and could you recreate the recipe at home. If it has a lot of weird chemicals and emulsifiers, preservatives, sweeteners etc it’s probably UPF.

Your diet looks generally good, I don’t think a handful of UPF is a big deal.

YADNBU.
I've ended up ignoring most of the anti-UPF movement because it's so full of weird contradictions. 100% white sugar or salt = those are fine... 1% mono-diglycerides = evil food that will kill you.

It's more like a "feeling" about what is 'good' or bad food. No actual coherent logic in what most the anti.UPFers say.

FWIW, simple food that are mostly low sugar & low salt & low weird additives are a good thing. I try to eat a lot of F&Veg.

There's a ladder thing that you can use to see how far 'up' the UPF chain each individual food is, but honestly, I can't get too worked up about it.

The one thing I'd change in my own house is bread, but DS is autistic and will not tolerate a brand-switch, I do sometimes get a sourdough and freeze it in slices just for me. And I think tortillas are pretty bad given I once found a three month out of date half a pack in the back of a cupboard and it hadn't even got mouldy - but we still eat them, maybe once a fortnight.

If you're cooking from scratch most days and not glugging back a litre of coke, you're doing ok.

(Someone will be along in a second to tell you UPFs are the literal devil's scrotum flakes though.)

Also many foods are 'processed' so we can eat them: cheese and tuna stand out from your list. They aren't UPFs though, they're just food that has undergone a process so that large numbers of non-hunter gatherers can feed themselves safely. Miracles, really. Populations wouldn't be able to survive without them.

It’s all bollocks. Just ignore it.

The biggest UPF I see reoccuring on your list is bread. You can also do simple swaps like swap regular beans for UPF free beans, most supermarket own organic ones are fine but this does mean at least doubling the price.

What kind of yohurt are you using? Most flavoured ones are UPF.

Some thing can be UPF free like a home made chocolate cake but it wouldn’t be healthly to eat a full one every day. Just being UPF doesn’t make a healthy diet.

I look at the ingredients and if they are a long list with thickeners, stabilisers, gums & chemicals I avoid.
So for example swapping Old El Paso wraps (Wheat Flour, Water, Stabiliser (Glycerol), Sunflower Oil, Emulsifier (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids), Dextrose, Raising Agents (Sodium Bicarbonate, Diphosphates), Salt) for
Crosta & Mollica (Durum Wheat Flour (67%), Water, Extra Virgin Olive Oil (8%), Salt)
Or making my own.

The main things we've changed are bread products, flavoured/kids yoghurt, sauces, squash and snacks.

Look at the contents labels.

Bread should be flour, yeast, water, sugar, possibly oil, maybe seeds. If it has e-numbers, emulsifier and mould inhibitor, then it's not so good.

Peanut butter should be peanuts and salt. Natural yoghurt is fine, some fruity yoghurts not to much so.

Why give raisins? They are a big no in childcare as too much sugar in the drying they are not counted as fruit.
Do you give natural flavoured with fresh fruit or children's yogurts?

You can cut down on sugary cereals and yoghurt, and replace with oats and Greek yoghurt.

I've ended up ignoring most of the anti-UPF movement because it's so full of weird contradictions. 100% white sugar or salt = those are fine... 1% mono-diglycerides = evil food that will kill you.

It's the latest bandwagon, if you miss it don't worry, there'll be another along soon.
There's nothing in it that hasn't been known for decades, it's just that some people have decided to monetise it.

Seriously I think it's all a load of rubbish. If you're a health weight, eating a good amount of protein, healthy carbs, fruit and veg with the occasional treat and getting a decent amount of recuse you're doing far better than most in the country. The whole UPF movement/book is just another thing for people to metaphorically beat themselves (and others) over the head with that they're not good enough.

The main issue with UPF is that it upsets the balance of omega 3 and omega 6 in your body.

Too much omega 6 in your cell membranes leads to obesity, diabetes, cancer etc.

Omega 3 is unstable and does not last.

So the quickest check is the shelf life. Anything with any sort of shelf life will have too much omega 6 compared to omega 3.

So fresh food with out preservatives, and a short shelf life is what you should be aiming to feed your children

Peanut butter? Cheese cubes? Yoghurts? Supermarket bread? Presumably the tortillas we have with fajitas?!! Tinned tuna? Beef mince? The baked beans I guess!

yes, all this is likely to be UHP and full of omega 6 fats without any omega 3 to balance it out. (depends on the quality of the food though, some peanut butter, yoghurt, bread etc, is not UHP) No problem as long as you are balancing it out with small quantities of these, and large quantities of greens along side them.

It is not rubbish, it is quite straightforward science.

There’s no contradiction there. White sugar isn’t ultra processed, it’s a simple processed food that has been around for hundreds of years rather than designed in a laboratory. Nobody is saying that means it’s good for you or you can eat as much as you want.

exactly this, some of these foods are fine, it depends largely on the shelf life, that is the quickest indicator

I read yesterday that the scientists now say bread should not be considered bad even if UP, because the fibre content outweighs the ultra processing element.

There is no contradiction, or confusion, it is simply about the fact we need a certain percent of the fats in our cell membranes to be omega 3, and we don't eat enough Omega 6 is important too, but is dangerous in excess.

There might well be other health issues with sugar and salt (well, there are, we know that) but it is a completely different subject. As far as Omega 6 goes, they don't contain any, so if you are looking at that in particular in your diet, then it wont stand out.

Mono and di glycerides and other preservatives are a red flag, because they prolong the shelf life, in which time the unstable omega 3s are lost, and the product becomes overwhelmingly a source of omega 6, and the balance is completely lost.

And again, with your "low sugar" food - the processing that removes the sugar may also take out the omega 3. Not only that, but artificial sweeteners cause an insulin spike exactly the same as sugar, because your taste buds don't know the difference, so low sugar options may be doing you more harm than full sugar options.

best bet is not to eat sweet food at all.

depends on the bread - there is very little fibre in white bread.

And wholemeal may well be more processed than white bread. A lot of wholemeal bread is made by adding wholemeal to preprocessed white bread, so again, it depends on the quality of the food, not the generalised type of food

There should be a 3rd voting option of 'it's all hysterical bullshit & life is too short'

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/ultra-processed-foods-bread-cereal-b2446836.html# htwww.independent.co.uk/news/health/ultra-processed-foods-bread-cereal-b2446836.html]]
This is the article, it doesn't mention colour of bread

? no idea who this is from except some of them may have some undefined link with the WHO, who will be talking about the bread available to buy in the whole world, not in westernised societies, and anyway, they seem to be talking bread not causing cancer, which is not really what this is about

And in general life is significantly shorter for people who eat more UPF. That is the whole point.