AIBU to think that the anti UPF books and diets around at the moment are just a new version of Clean Eating?

[TeaforTheWins]

Demonising all foods that have emulsifiers in and making us think that a “upf” free diet is realistic, to me, is madness. I eat well, I cook meals from scratch most of the time but of course I have “UPF” in my diet. A sandwich in my packed lunch made from supermarket bread, the odd tin of soup, biscuits with my tea, fruit yoghurts, a sandwich on the train, a supermarket croissant on a Sunday morning etc.
Am i not getting something? Or is this just another way to make women hate our bodies, hate ourselves for not having the time to be baking bread at home, and part with our hard earned money to buy artisan chocolate rather than the kit kat that we actually want.
I’ve read Ultra Processed People and I’ve listened to the podcasts, but I can’t see how this is at all realistic for working parents to live up to.

I only have an ice cream shelf thing and not a proper freezer so if a loaf of bread only lasts 3 days without being in the freezer, that will not work for me.

Our neighbour gave us their old bread maker. I used it a few times but I actually didn't like the taste. I've made bread from scratch lots of times which is much nicer, but time consuming and faffy. (And only lasts for a day or 2)

On another thread someone said stewed apple was upf!! And then it makes me lose hope that any home cooking is OK! We never buy pasta sauces and would make eg bolognese...but are they counted as processed because the tomatoes are cooked and blitzed?

I think anyone who is going around telling people stewing apples and cooking tomatoes is UPF has comprehension issues that no one can help with tbh. UPF-free doesn't mean a raw diet!

I've heard people claim eating UPF-free is orthorexia, too, or just plain restrictive. Which is baffling to me. None-UPF still includes full fat butter, rice, potatoes, all of the vegetables, beans, pulses, fish, meat, dairy. There's homemade bread, scones, cakes, biscuits.

I honestly just think that people don't bother to read what it is. Or they're fully aware but prefer to be disparaging to excuse their own diets and that of their kids.

I think whoever told you that is a bit thick to be honest. It really isn't difficult to see ehat is non processed, slightly processed or basically utter crap.

There’s a lot of confusion between processed food and ultra processed food. I’ve seen fish fingers mentioned, when they’re actually one of the better processed foods. Same with baked beans, and I’d also imagine the same goes for stewed apple. Princes stewed apple in a tin contains apple, sugar and cornflour. That’s processed rather than UPF.

Some pasta sauces are processed and others are UPF. Dolmio has a warning on the jar not to eat it more than once a week!

Lots of UPFs are ‘pre-digested’. Chicken nuggets for example are made from a mush, containing chicken, artificial flavourings, emulsifiers, preservatives etc. They then add more chemicals to firm up this pulp and make it appear like chicken in its original form. It makes them very easy to chew, and is one of the reasons people over-consume UPFs, because they go down so easily your body doesn’t recognise that it’s full until you’ve eaten loads of it. It then breaks down very quickly and you feel hungry again much quicker.

The most simplistic rule of thumb is to read the ingredients. If the ingredients are all recognisable foodstuffs in their own right you’re okay. If it contains a list of weird stuff like flavour enhancers, gelling agents, bulking agents, emulsifiers, then it UPF.

But no one is being sneery about people who are restricted in the way you describe.

It's been said multiple times that the system itself needs to change. If someone is temporary accommodation without the means to cook, there should be available and affordable microwave meals for them to access in the supermarket. Things like that may also help disabled people who can't cook, etc.

Would I judge someone living in temporary accommodation for eating a microwave lasagne? Or getting a McDonalds breakfast? Of course not.

Would I judge someone with major depression who managed to get up and shove a ready meal in the oven? Of course not.

Would I judge your average person who works full time, has no kids, and can't be bothered to cook so has a frozen pizza and chips for tea? Not really, as long as they don't try and tell me UPF free is impossible. It's their body.

Would I judge your average parent, who either stays at home or works PT or FT, has no issues more than anyone else on this thread, who feeds a steady trickle of UPF into their children's bodies? Yes.

Because most of these people have reading comprehension enough and common sense enough to know it's bad for them. Many have their own issues with weight or other health problems that can be attributed to diet. They know KFC isn't healthy. They know they shouldn't be getting that second takeaway. They know smilies aren't as healthy as normal potatoes. They know crisps aren't as good as fruit and veg and nuts. They see it in themselves, but they still give it to their children.

I think that's extremely unfair. They wouldn't let their child sit in a car filled with smoke, sleep in a cot with bumpers, not wear a seat belt. But they willingly give them food that has been proven to be unhealthy. And that's not even to start with the state of some kids teeth because of all the sugar; my friend is a dentist in a fairly affluent area, and she's disgusted by the way parents allow their kids to consume so much sugar and what it's doing to their teeth alone.

As a parent, it's my responsibility to care for my children. That includes diet and making good food choices, building good habits, and teaching how to cook.

*available and affordable UPF free microwave meals in the supermarket

There's also little agreement over what upfs actually are. For instance wholemeal bread it often has ingredients added to stop it going off. Some people say it's still upf and others say it isn't.

I recommend trying rye bread, it has much longer shelf life and most often the ingredients list is much shorter compared to regular white wheat bread, because making rye bread is more about skill than adding extra whatnots to make it fluffy.

DH is the only person in the house that currently eats bread and he buys a small Danish rye bread that lasts him a week. He only has bread for breakfast.

I used to bake bread and I agree it’s not feasible. Rye bread doesn’t need any folding but it needs perfect timing over several phases of the dough rising so it’s difficult to combine this with a full time job. I’ve only ever baked 70%, 80% and 90% rye bread or 100% rye pumpernickel. The shelf life of these breads is excellent, I would make a large loaf started on Friday evening and baked on Sunday and it would easily last a week for a family of 4. The logistics involved were quite complicated though.

I’ve never tried a bread machine, rye breads require sourdough and I have never seen a bread machine compatible with a standard three-stages sourdough bread. The dough would damage the machine over time and I don’t like the taste of bread made with yeast alone.

With this thread in mind I timed how long it took to make homemade chips today. 8 minutes to wash, chop and toss 600g of potatoes in olive oil. Then into oven for 35 minutes.

That is approx 7 minutes more work than using frozen chips.... and healthier!

It IS possible and accessible for many people (ok not all) to reduce UPfs in their diet. The aim isn't 0 UPf.

Yup! I made an omelette with spuds and salad.

I boiled and drained the potatoes this morning while we were getting ready to go out. Didn't time it but...20 mins? 30? Really not sure, once they were on I didn't think about it. New potatoes so didn't require peeling or chopping.

Chopped some spinach, cheese, and red peppers. Whisked the eggs with a splash of milk, cooked in olive oil. While that was cooking I quickly chopped a few tomatoes, some cucumber and lettuce, and then it was done. Didn't bother warming the potatoes back up because we like them cold, too. Took about 20 minutes, and that included me faffing around a bit.

It's really not time consuming at all.

I'm afraid I can't stand rye bread.

crisps are fried in seed oils - which is a UPF, so even ready salted are not UPF free. You can buy crisps ford in olive oil, but I've only seen share bags and they're expensive, so I don't eat crisps

Sorry my bad-baked beans are upf as have modified starch-although some don’t like Waitrose organic baked beans. They are still considered healthy though. Real sourdough bread and some artisan bread are not upfs. Sourdough if it contains just flour, salt and water rather than fake sourdough. Biscuits-I buy shortbread or the Lu butter biscuits-just flour butter sugar, salt. And plain crisps contain potatoes, oil and salt. Flavoured ones contain the upf flavouring ingredients and even high fructose corn syrup. High cocoa plain chocolate is the one to look for.I do eat some upf-eg Hellman’s, ketchup, the odd shop bought cake, the odd croissant, stock cubes. But I still eat some foods from childhood-plain stews made with cheap meat potatoes, carrots and celery. Scrambled egg. Real chips and roasts. Added to more modern meals like bean and chickpea chilli, lentils as a side dish or heated up then stirred through with a can of tuna, chopped tomato, spring onion and cucumber.

Honestly I think if schools taught kids to be able at least to make a chilli , a bolognese and a cottage pie-using a mix of small amounts of beef along with soya mince plus a chicken noodle stir fry and a chicken curry it would help a lot- none of these are hard and can be rotated endlessly whether single or in a family

Yes, I don’t know if it’s because I’m old and my bullshit tolerance is low, but I don’t blame women. We all NEED to eat less UPF and better quality ingredients for our health and well-being.

I’m angry with successive governments who have allowed the cost of living to spiral out of control in such a way that many adults have to work so many hours to afford the basics. So many hours that they cannot afford the time to cook from scratch. Which isn’t that difficult or expensive but time is essential.

I’m angry with the men that don’t do their share around the house or share the mental load of running the household. Why is it so often down to the woman to ensure the children have a healthy diet?

And I’m annoyed with the food industry, although to be fair they are just responding to neoliberal capitalism’s call to maximise profit above all else. There’s more profit in hyper palatable foods made with too much salt, sugar and fat - filled with fillers, preservatives, sweetners and emulsifiers.

Sure. I generally prefer to make my own as I just think it’s nicer but I’m sure there are loads of quick pasta options. Most pasta we have we can do in 30 mins to be honest.
I can’t help feeling if you wanted to suggest an under 30 min easy meal to someone who asked for some you could have just given this as a reply to them vs specifically coming to point out how I’m doing quick pasta sauce wrong though 😂

Not criticising you, just adding an even quicker version as a general contribution to the thread.

Ithink I'm with the OP on this.

It's not that the concerns about UPFs are wrong, (although I think there can sometimes be some bs around what is actually very minor processing.)

It's more the way the public has taken up the movement. It largely seems to appeal to a lot of the same impulses that the clean eating fad did, and the fads around cutting out all gluten/dairy/meat/whatever.

For whatever reason there seems to be a big huge thing centered around orthorexia now, and this is another version for many people I also think intermittent fasting plays the same role for some.

My feeling is it's almost a kind of manichean purity thinking.

I do think that these foods, and also snacking and eating on the go, are probably the most implicated in the current heath/obesity crises.

I sometimes think part of the issue is that we have come to believe people need a new kind of food everyday, with no repeats in a two week period.

People get laughed at for saying they have the same kind of meal (meat/fish, potatoes, two veg) every day. But that is what most traditional diets are like - not that combination, but very similar daily food varied somewhat by seasonality.

It's way easier to cook if you know what you need to do every day, and you don't have to make many choices while shopping either.

The other problem we have as a society is how few people actually sit down to meals as a group, or even eat meals at home.

I live alone, and don't eat a lot of bread, and I don't have any space for any kitchen gadgets. I'm not going to beat myself up for buying supermarket bread, which I can keep in the fridge for a while (I generally only eat toast). The sort of food I buy, which would have many on this thread throwing their hands up in horror, was around when I was a kid (I'm 65) in various forms, my DP's ate it and both lived until their late 80s with little in the way of major health issues. I eat plenty of fresh or frozen vegetables and I'm not going to stress about the occasional oven chips or hash browns, and if I fancy sausages a couple of times a month then I'm going to have them. I even have McDonalds breakfast once a month - so what? It's much easier to cook for several people than for one, and I only have a tiny freezer so batch cooking is limited. I sometimes make a big pot of soup - and I'm bored with it by the time I get to the end, and canned tastes much nicer imo. Moderation in all things is my motto, but some people take things to extreme.

This is true. I've heard people say things like "Oh we had fish last night, so tonight needs to be different". I had a flatmate who wouldn't eat carrots several nights a week, despite them being a reduced price bag. She let them go to mush in her veg drawer instead.

It's bizarre. Even if it's the same kind of fish, it can be cooked in different ways. Carrots don't just have to be boiled. There are spices and herbs and all sorts of other crazy things that can be added.

Another thing seems to be that people don't know how to/don't want to make things up with odds and ends. They just chuck them out and buy a takeaway. If there's bits of random veg left I'll make soups, stews, curries, sauces, dips and all sorts. All it takes is a bit of imagination and a tiny bit of effort.

My dad would be rolling in his grave if I threw out good veg water, too. Perfect for making gravies or soup stock. None of this stuff is big drastic choices. It's stuff people have been doing for donkeys years.

". If there's bits of random veg left I'll make soups, stews, curries, sauces, dips and all sorts."

It's probably a waste of energy and money to make a curry out of a small bunch of veg.

As for carrots, I can quite understand someone not wanting to eat them every day. I went for years without potatoes after getting them so often as a child so too much can really put you off.

On the other hand, many people are very happy to have the same thing for breakfast every day and to rotate a few different sandwiches or salads for lunch.

How on earth is it a waste of energy and money? I made a pan of curry last week with odds and ends of veg. It fed four people and there was some left over to go on a baked potato for lunch.

I see you commenting quite a bit about why you don't want to repeat things you had in childhood. That's your choice. You've batted away most suggestions people have given you because you don't want to cook. Again, your choice; fair play.

No one is saying you need to eat carrots every day. What I'm saying is, buying a bag for one meal then letting the rest rot while is just wasteful. Boiled carrots taste nothing like honey roasted carrots. Cod in a butter sauce with boiled potatoes and carrots tastes nothing like a spicy tray bake of carrots, potatoes, onions, and roasted cod with some cherry tomatoes.