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 had a Panasonic for years and loved it, but started making my own bread a few years ago and the home made is loads better.

Of you're in a routine making your own, I wouldn't bother with the machine.

He didn't say in the sentence you quoted it is the only effect of eating UPFs.

There's gut dysbiosis, which affects every major organ of the body, including and especially the brain.

There is an increased risk of heart disease, and of type 2 diabetes, depressiona and anxiety, and of cancer, and of an early death.

It is really important, it's not just a fad to monetise - anyone that thinks so please read the book Ultra Processed People which is extremely engaging to read and also has all the science footnoted if you want to go check all the peer-reviewed studies. I highly recommend this facebook group which has answers to all your questions OP and gives practical tips for how to reduce rather then eliminate UPFs: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1624807241363256/

It is really important, it's not just a fad to monetise - anyone that thinks so please read the book Ultra Processed People...

Did you manage to write this with a straight face?

@Rummly you don’t have to buy the book - the basic message is to avoid UPF where possible.

If you are sceptical about the science behind it though then the book sets it all out in a clear and digestible form.

And, to state the very obvious, there is a lot more money in prepackaged convenience foods than in fresh food so if you swapped the former for the latter you would save a lot of money.

@Mostlycarbon Try the Yuka app, you can scan barcodes and it tells you if it has dangerous additives in it. It's really opened my eyes to some easy swaps.

Anything that says "diet" or "reduced sugar" normally has artificial sweeteners in.

The person said 'read' the book - not buy.
It is on BorrowBox, and in local libraries.

I checked our peanut butter and I'm pleased to report its 100% peanuts. Pleasantly surprised.

That’s a useful metaphor for anti-UPF maniacs: 100% nuts.

Well mine is Skippy, so I'm screwed!

@Rummly

@Rummly

A question - would you have been equally as cynical (and rude) about those warning about the dangers of smoking a few decades back? After all, smoking was both socially acceptable and indeed prescribed on occasion for nerves.

I realise I'm playing into your hands as an "anti-UPF maniac" (and I'm not, I accept a small amount of UPFs as unavoidable). But I'm also not blind to the research, and the increasing concerns of reputable scientists. UPFs are only a relatively recent thing in our diets, specifically the lab-created ingredients. Ignoring the fact that you are ingesting things not designed for human consumption, there is compelling evidence that it is really impacting neurological, biological and god knows what else aspects of our health.

I don't understand this sniffy attitude about this being a 'fad'. This isn't criticism about a healthy Vs unhealthy diet. It's the laboratory / chemically engineered ingredients that have no place in the human body.

(And you don't even want to go down the rabbit hole of discovering a certain seed oil was originally created as vehicle lubricants in the war, until Proctor and Gamble decided to rebrand and used advertising techniques that encouraged consumers not to be concerned about the ingredients but to trust their brand!)

But, if you want to poo poo the research and carry on eating *looks at notes emulsifiers and mino-and diacetyl tartaric acid esters of mono and diglycerides of fatty acids (part of Tesco's bread ingredient list. Yum! And here I was making bread with flour, water, yeast and salt), then have at it but don't scoff at others who want to push back on the avalanche of shit foods that we're presented with.

No, I wouldn’t have questioned the evidence about smoking. Because smoking and UPF couldn’t be less associated.

The rest of your post is completely irrelevant.

@Rummly but how?! How can you happily eat bio-engineered chemicals designed only to prolong the shelf life of a food, or even worse, to create a taste similar to the one your mind and tongue are expecting but has been eliminated because of the intense and chemical processing of said food?! There's one thing to be cynical, and another to just blithely ignore the fact that you might, just possibly, be wrong, and like those who were once told smoking was good for them, that the corporations selling stuff to them were just after a profit and couldn't give a toss about their health.

But I don't care about your diet, obviously, so crack on. But I want my children to eat foods that were intended for their bodies so I'll carry on with my maniacal ways. The horror! I check ingredients! Oh god, I hope they forgive me!

I don’t think the poster is saying that smoking and UPFs are the same thing or even “associated” (whatever that means).

The parallels are that smoking cigarettes - an addictive product - was promoted by industry in pursuit of profit at the expense of public health. The smoking industry sponsored, funded, controlled and manipulated most of the research into the safety of smoking and suppressed - for decades - research which showed it to be harmful. All of those things can be said in relation to UPFs too.

“In relation to”. Yup, that’s your ‘associated’ right there. Crappy pseudoscience.

I could have used the word “about”.

It would be helpful if you could
tell me which bits are pseudoscience?

UPFs are addictive ✅
Huge multinational companies make lots of money out of selling them ✅
Those same companies spend millions on research which shows that their products are not only safe but actually healthy ✅
UPFs are in fact very bad for your health ✅

Anti-vaxxer style arguments. No science, no common sense.

It’s just really blatantly obvious common sense that eating fresh, whole, natural food is better for your health than reconstituted food products packed full of artificial chemicals and flavourings.

And it is backed up by an increasing body of scientific research.

Ultimately though I really don’t care what you choose to eat so won’t bother engaging with you on this anymore.

@JumpinJellyfish I was going to write the same. I'm curious as to what boundaries @Rummly may have with regards to the ingredients they ingest. Is there a benchmark? Are you ok with emulsifiers but you'd draw the line at say... 'Allura Red' food dye, which is derived from coal tars and petroleum distillates. And if so, then welcome... enlightenment is a wonderful thing.

👍

Good. I’d just ask that you don’t spout any more scaremongering bogus nonsense.

Ta.

Since I haven’t done this, I don’t need to “stop”.

Thank you.

I had to google gut dysbiosis. Apparently these are symptoms (image). The only one I can claim is an occasional pimple, none of the rest. I thought the occasional pimple was because I'm a grotty minger. I don't have (never had) cancer or T2DM. When will I get one of those symptoms or problems from decades of eating UPF? Age 40 or 50? Age 60? 80?

I'm just baffled that anyone would even argue with this.

It is common sense that real food is better for you than something which is manufactured to mimic real food but isn't.

Done care, that's fine but arguing with it?

You’re being ridiculous. Smoking causes cancer but not everyone who smokes gets cancer. My heavy smoker granny was still arguing the toss about smoking being bad for you until the late 1980s and the fact she lived until she was nearly 90 doesn’t prove she was right and everyone else was wrong.

You seem to have missed the point. The disregulation in the gut, whether it is apparent to you or not, affects every organ in the body. As the gut is the main generator of serotonin, it affects mood; as the gut and the brain are in constant communication, with 80% or so of the information being sent from the gut to the brain, rather than the other way around, it affects all sorts of brain processes.

Every organ in the body, even the eyes, have a relationship with the gut - this is being increasingly studied.

If you want to increase your risk of the other unpleasant diseases - cardiovascular, type 2 diabetes, dementia, etc - go for it.