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.

As the parent of a child who developed inflammatory bowel disease aged 9 as part of the enormous increase in pediatric IBD in countries adopting a "Western" diet, it really isn't bollocks. There is significant and growing evidence of the impact of emulsifiers (I don't mean egg, mustard or honey before some smartarse comes to tell me these are natural emulsifiers), gums, carrageenans and artificial sweeteners in the triggering of such diseases, which once they are triggered are lifelong and incurable.

The big scandal is that the evidence has been around for some years (as seen in this Reuters roundup from 2015) and yet governments have done nothing about it.
https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/science/study-links-common-food-additives-to-crohns-disease-colitis-idUSKBN0LT26R/#:~:text=Consuming%20emulsifiers%20increased%20the%20risk,the%20condition%2C%20the%20study%20found.

OP, it's the current big thing, isn't it? Some people are very knowledgeable and others aren't. But they both speak about it with equal confidence as all the threads on MN show!

From what I understand, the thing with UPF is that many (not all) use chemicals and engineered ingredients to create a 'version' of that food to make it recognisable, palatable, and cheaper, but with absolutely zero nutrition and in many cases actively harmful... but not only that, the lab-created ingredients trick your body into thinking you are ingesting nutritious food, so when the body doesn't absorb the nutrients the brain thinks it is, there are then additional neurological issues at play.*

This is the real issue. it might look like food. But it isn't. It's edible and will fill you up (for a while). But it's not food.

My daughter is 18 and I dropped all UPF stuff when she was a baby. We didn't really eat it before then tbf but we cut it out when she was a baby.

All food is processed to a degree - jars of passata don't grow on trees! But if you couldn't make the food you are buying in your own kitchen because of the ingredients then it's upf.

Yoghurts are a big one so we eat full fat Greek yoghurt and berries. My daughter adds honey if she wants more sweetness.

If you buy a complete meal, eg a cottage pie or spaghetti bolognese, it's going to be upf. If you make one yourself with passata, onion, garlic, minced beef and herbs, it isn't.

Dr's Chris and X and have a podcast you might want to listen to? Just Google it.

One thing I will say is, people always comment that I look younger than I am. I don't have spectacular genes, I drink and smoke occasionally and I don't exercise. I'm also very rarely ill and my children haven't been to the drs in years. We're talking primary school and they're both adults now. They're very rarely ill.

The only thing I can point it to is that we are careful about what we eat.

But they did used to both complain on occasion that the fridge/cupboards were full of ingredients rather than food!

Easy way to work out what’s upf, is it natural ingredients- could you make it at home if you wanted to? Do you recognise the ingredients? If it’s emulsifier, gum, sweetener, stabiliser, modified this and that it’s upf. Greek yoghurt - not upf, activia- upf. Sunpat - upf, pip and nut - not upf. You can swap lots of things to non upf brands

Of course people do. Toast for breakfast, then a sandwich at work, maybe going out and have a burger (maybe a ‘gourmet’ one, still in a bun). I don’t think many people limit their bread (or bread like) intake to just one a day.

I guess it depends on your attitude to food ....no wonder so many struggle with weight and health. That's bad even if you don't worry about processed

I must say I generally don't eat bread more than once a day, sometimes not even once. When you are busy at work, travelling to and fro, you burn up the calories more easily so it doesn't hurt to have a bit more. I am retired and, though I have to eat well and regularly, I am usually careful.

Well yes.
A lot of people think the NHS dietary advice overemphasises starchy food.
I have also read that there has been a massive shift in the British diet since the war from potatoes forming a large part of the carb intake to eating masses more wheat flour, mostly white, partly because of the increase in pasta and bread related products like wraps but also bread itself. It wouldn’t be ideal even if it wasn’t UPF but for people whose diet is, it can form a major part of their UPF consumption and can be one of the simplest ways to cut down without having to rethink your entire menu from scratch.

Your diet is good!
I must be really stupid bc when I look at the number of ingredients in coca cola, it looks like hardly any. Sugar, flavourings. How bad can the flavourings actually be? I guess the acids are really bad. But lemons are acidic?
I guess I'm justifying my addiction. Haha.
I've started buying posh bread. I thought I never would but it tastes so much better and doesn't get wasted. I'm hoping that's cancelling the coke?!

The way I've seen it explained before is that unprocessed foods are the raw ingredients (e.g. fruit, veg, meat, eggs, nuts & seeds).

Slightly processed ingredients are the things that need something doing to it to be used (e.g. flour, butter, sugar, salt, oils).

Processed foods are a combination of the first two categories and could be made by a home cook (e.g. bakery bread, cheese, jams, tinned fish, salted nuts).

Ultra-processed are foods which have chemicals, sweeteners, and artificial colours and flavours added to improve texture, appearance, and longevity (e.g. flavoured yoghurts, fruit squash, most supermarkets sliced bread, many cereals).

As with most advice it's about being sensible. Having mostly whole foods, most of the time, is fine. Having the odd ice cream or packet of crisps isn't that big a problem. It's about making the right choices for you and your family (and in this weather, who doesn't fancy an ice lolly?)

Read Ultra Processed People. It's eye opening and speaks a lot of truth while allowing you to make your mind up. There's no doubt other countries are in a far worse position with these foods than us. There's a lot in your list that could contain ultra processed ingredients. The bread products, most definitely. You will just have to look at the ingredients. If it is something you wouldn't find in your kitchen cupboards then it's ultra processed. Artificial sweeteners are one of the worst offenders for weight gain.

The phosphoric acid in coke has a completely different impact on the body to citric acid from lemons:

'A high content of phosphoric acid in soft drinks has been hypothesized to be one of the mechanisms linking soft drinks and fracture. Excessive intake of phosphoric acid changes calcium/phosphorus ratio and imbalance of not only the calcium and phosphorus ratio but also the acid-base in the body, resulting in decreased bone density and even osteoporosis and fractures'

No one knows if UPF are actively bad for you (like smoking) or bad because they displace other healthy foods. If you eat solely UPF you will probably get enough vitamins (as breakfast cereal is fortified) but very little fresh fruit, veg or fibre, and it's easier to eat too many calories as UPF are often calorie dense. The BBC article highlights the view that a home baked cake is just as bad for you as a shop bought one!

YANBU you toddler's diet sounds fine

Yes, they do. It has been shown that, for starters, emulsifiers negatively impact the gut microbiome, promote gut inflammation and associated disease states, and are thought to be linked to obesity and metabolic disease.

For those interested in the bread thing, this recipe is so simple that I thought I'd share here. I mean, yes, it's less convenient than shop bought but I usually make this twice a week and top up with a bakers loaf if I'm too tired or busy in between (it takes 5 minutes to mix but it takes 14 hours to rest so I just do it in the evening and bake the next day). It only requires four ingredients and a large cooking pot / casserole dish with lid, and it's so tasty!

www.theclevercarrot.com/2013/03/no-knead-artisan-bread/

Your diet there looks pretty good. I've made a few basic swaps - generally I find 'own brand' supermarket things are often non-UPF compared to UPF brand-name (e.g., spreadable cheeses, cereals), so that was pretty easy to sort.

I think it's more a problem if you live on ready meals and snack bars and such.

It's not quite about this displacing theory though - as I mentioned upthread there are lab-created or 'bio-engineered' so called ingredients that have shown to actively mess around with your body, so tricking your body into thinking it's receiving nutrients that just aren't there. It's more than just 'bad food' but rather ingesting things that the human body was not designed for. It is worth looking into more - you don't have to become a zealot about it, but it is eye opening when you read the science behind the companies creating a lot of this food!

(And the cake thing? I don't particularly mind eating unhealthy food that I've made, what I would want to avoid are the ingredients I can't even pronounce let alone buy in my supermarket :)

The below is a Betty Crocker cake. Mmmmm, dicalcium phosphate!

Ingredients
Ingredients: Enriched Flour Bleached (wheat flour, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), Sugar, Corn Syrup, Leavening (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate). Contains 2% or less of: Modified Corn Starch, Corn Starch, Propylene Glycol Mono and Diesters, Salt, Monoglycerides, Palm Oil, Dicalcium Phosphate, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Xanthan Gum, Cellulose Gum, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Yellows 5 & 6.

Im exactly the same. My Mum relied on freezer food and I struggled with my weight as a child and teen. I remember eating at a friends house who's parents were a lot better off and made food from scratch. I honestly thought their food tasted disgusting (looking back, thank god I was polite enough to eat it!). I realise now I just didn't like the taste of it because it wasn't salty and sugary like the stuff I had at home.

As an adult I've really struggled with my weight but only got to a healthy state by eating food that is broadly whole food. I'm not an evangelist and wouldn't go banging people over the head about it. But UPF does not satisfy your hunger in the same way and it leaves you wanting more, while at the same time being high in fat, salt, sugar and whatever else.

I try my best to limit it with my own kids. But like fizzy drinks, McDs, sweet etc they have it occasionally because it exits and they need to be able to eat it as part of an overall healthy diet.

We ate pretty well anyway but since reading the book I’ve stopped buying all supermarket bread products (we are lucky to live near a bakery that makes sourdough), flavoured yoghurts (now just full fat Greek) and kids “healthy” snacks like veggie straws.

Like a pp I also bought an ice cream
maker and omg - homemade ice cream is unreal! Tastes a million times better than shop bought. I will still buy the kids a lolly or ice cream from the van but will never buy a supermarket tub of it again.

We still have mayo, the odd tin of beans and fish fingers, but overall I feel
we are doing well.

Don't confuse the hype with eating reasonably healthily.
If you make most foods from scratch you're doing well.

Anything up to processed on this chart is ok I think. Really UPF is just stuff like cake, chocolate, ready meals, white bread. No big surprises.

@Thegreatgiginthesky yikes. That might explain why I've got a metal plate in my hip aged 41, and worse bones than my 85 yo mum?!

I can’t see the French giving up their bread.

It’s not all bread - bread baked in a bakery using flour, yeast and water is absolutely fine.

It’s supermarket bread wrapped in plastic with all kinds of preservatives that give it a long shelf life that is UPF - the French wouldn’t touch that stuff with a barge pole.

It's crazy, because when I make my homemade bread, pizza base etc I don't get bloated the next day, and no weight gain, despite copious amounts of cheese etc. When I have packet bread I gain weight! I eat it sometimes for convenience, hovis seeded etc, but I prefer it without additives where possible.