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.

No I don't think it's the same, as 'clean' eating often involves removing entire food groups like dairy, and often involves exclusion such as gluten (with no good reason!). I understand UPF free foods as foods that are minimally processed. For example, I have started baking a fair bit now and again for the family (banana bread etc) to try and replace some of our processed snacks. Banana bread wouldn't be seen as 'clean' due to sugar content etc, but it's much less ultra processed than a shop bought snack.

Non Western places often have different lifestyles though. So there may well be someone around who has time to cook. Unlike rushed Western lifestyles.

I came to the opposite conclusion. I find most of these people are really compassionate, they lay blame at the structure of our society, capitalism and the food industry. I feel empowered reading the books to do the best I can. And I’ve felt healthier cutting out some stuff with additives that I’d never guessed were bad.

I think Chris Van Tulken is really careful not to lay blame on women or those who can't afford non upf stuff.

I also can’t help but feel we shouldn’t hide our heads in the sand every time we learn something new. We are humans and the day we stop learning would be a sad one. What one chooses to do with the Information is another thing.

Perhaps this is just another reason the birth rate is going down. Intelligent people who are not well off know it takes time and money to keep a healthy family yet so much they need to accomplish this is unattainable; stable job which allows for a life, stable accommodation whether rented or being able to own, a partner willing to contribute fully to the raising, rearing and providing to of children. Why should they feel they should do as their mothers have always done? Maybe as a society we should recognise the time it takes to make healthy meals for a family?

But it doesn't need to take a long time to cook. There are plenty of meals that can be made from scratch in half an hour. Hardly anybody is going to be so very strapped for time that they absolutely must just heat ready-meals.

It does take money though.

For example;

A) a bag of 38 chicken nuggets (600g) can be had for £3 and will last around 9 meals on the presumption of 3-4 nuggets at a time. Oven chips are £1.40 for a 900g bag, again approx 9 meals based on a 100g serving. Frozen peas are £1.20 for a 900g bag, assuming 90g a serving that's also around 9 meals. One meal of nuggets, chips and peas would cost around 62p.

B) a 600g pack of chicken breasts is £4.25, 900g of potatoes is roughly 80p, a bag of plain breadcrumbs with no added "UPF" ingredients is £1.50, and again peas are £1.20 for a 900g bag. Dividing it into nine meals is 88p a serving and that's not taking into account things like the cost of the egg to dip the chicken in before breadcrumbing it or the additional cooking time (as well as the additional preparation time).

If you are on a very limited food budget (and likely pushed for both time and fuel costs too) and you know 100% that your child will eat A, that it fits into your time, and that you can pick it up at your local shop then you're far more likely to buy and cook A.

Being choosy about what you eat based on a set of arbitrary "good" vs "bad" attributes is a privilege that is generally more easily accessible to those in more affluent circumstances or higher socio-economic groups who have access to the required foods, the means to pay for them and the knowledge/education required to know how to cook them (or to look up such information).

Yeah but some people hate cooking. Who cba cooking from scratch every day after a full day at work and out of the house from 8-6?

Isnt this why convenience food was invented? Maybe we should look at creating healthier convenience food than piling more pressure on working people.

Yes. Lots of inexpensive ones also. But people don't want to hear it because it is easier to claim that reducing UPF is for the rich or those with eating disorders or those with unlimited time.
Also, nobody needs to buy artisanal chocolate to replace your Kit-Kats or sourdough bread to replace your ordinary bread. Just don't eat a Kit-Kat or white bread daily; they aren't essential. There are other things you can eat.

It’s the planning and preparation, especially for those who walk or take public transport. For those who don’t have a freezer or fridge or oven (or other time saving device) it adds on an extra challenge. Having the time means also having energy and motivation. Being stressed and depressed already doesn’t help anyone feel like they can make changes (which may actually be small). It’s also about not having the budget to accommodate failure. What if the family doesn’t like the meal? What if you get it wrong? What if you’ve never learnt to cook? Even simple things. I agree it can be easier than we think but I also understand why people think it will be a hassle and time consuming. I was one of them :)

Can people give ideas for 30 minutes meals. Because my washing, peeling chopping even a stir fry takes at least 30 minutes.
I can’t even make homemade wedges and fried eggs in 30 minutes. Especially not allotment potatoes that need need careful checking for passengers.

I agree. He labours the point that it’s far more expensive to eat fresh ingredients and it really shouldn’t be.

I can remember back in the 70s and 80s my dad used to smoke in the car with us children in it, he wouldn’t even let us put the window down. When we’d complain he’d tell us that his parents smoked around him and it never did him any harm. It’s horrific by today’s standards. I’m sure we’ll look back in horror one day at we were fed, or indeed fed our children.

There are theories which link gut dysbiosis to neurodivergence. We’re seeing an explosion in bowel cancer among very young people (20s and 30s), and of course huge increases in diabetes and obesity. We need to make changes. I really fear for my young adult children who live on takeaways and beige freezer shit (despite knowing how to cook).

Of course that doesn’t mean excluding all UPFs, but we can make fairly easy changes to try to lower them. Getting touchy and seeing it as criticism isn’t going to solve the problem. Loads of us are addicted to it, so are bound to react defensively. But it’s not difficult to buy a bag of frozen veg and have that as a side, instead of something highly processed, even if you are a working mother.

meh, if it’s less healthy than less processed food, it is what it is. You’re free to eat what you want OP, no one’s going to prize your yoghurt out your hand.

It’s obvious that a factory-made yoghurt with sugar/sweeteners, flavourings, etc. is going to be less tasty and less healthy than plain greek yoghurt with your own fruit added to it.

It’s not a conspiracy to make you feel bad.

YANBU.

We all know what a broadly healthy diet looks like.

What troubles me about the UPF trend is the posts on there shouting "UPF" as if that was one single ingredient with one scientifically proven mechanism of harm. Like smoking. It isn't though, it's a huge array of things that will cause varying degrees of harm, including some that won't do much wrong at all.

By all means aim to eat a healthier, less processed diet, but I'm very sceptical about an umbrella term applied to such a variety of foods.

I don't eat this kind of food, I guess. I don't eat nuggets or chips or readymeals, never have. Vegetables and pulses are relatively cheap.

But I don't come from an affluent family or high socio-economic group. I just come from an immigrant family which didn't know any other way of eating. I guess there is some privilege in food knowledge, but this is something that can be easily looked up these days on the internet. I do work full time and so did my mum. I don't really like cooking, but I dislike UPF crap even more.

Anyway, we have had this discussion many times before, and if people don't want to reduce UPFs because they think it's a posh Western fad, that's fine. I don't agree though.

I think perhaps there is some value in at least reducing UPF, so better white bread than chicken nuggets at least.

A lot of those skills around selecting ingredients and preparing them to make low cost, nutritious meals are taught and - sadly - not everyone is taught. It's a complex issue with lots of different factors playing into it - time, cost, access to ingredients/shops (e.g., over a million people in the UK live in food deserts), lack of education, lack of motivation with factors like mental health coming into play. There isn't one straight-forward fix.

I think good places to start would be proper food tech taught in schools that focuses on 'real life' cooking, including meal planning, budgeting, looking up recipes, shopping for ingredients, etc. Better food regulations with more transparency around ingredients and their purpose would help too.

Aye, and I mean another thing – why make the comparison (B) a recreation of the chicken nuggets? ((Who in the history of forever has ever bothered making homemade chicken nuggets??))

Far easier and a better comparison would be a big stew / dhal / whatev that could be batch cooked with minimal supervision (just leave on the hob to cook) then frozen and eaten all week.

Stew all week😕

When I was skint, the cheapest meal I found to cook was homemade dhal and chapatis (the latter literally just flour and oil).

(Which also had the bonus of being easy, filling, and really really tasty)

loool… or frozen and alternated with other meals 😂

haha loved the original heart eyes – the stew all week journey as realisation of stew ALL week dawns 🤣🤣🤣

tbf I’d rather have stew all week than chicken nuggets from a bag all week 😭

I know😁

I think it's good there is discussion on this as so many people didn't know how much crap went into fruit yoghurts, for instance. And it's an easy swap to substitute natural yoghurt.

I don't really identify with all this "hating your body" stuff. I'd rather know what I am putting into my body, so when I eat crisps or chocolate, I know it's an occasional treat, not a daily thing.

Aye, and I mean another thing – why make the comparison (B) a recreation of the chicken nuggets? ((Who in the history of forever has ever bothered making homemade chicken nuggets??))

I agree. People who don't buy chicken nuggets aren't doing so because they make their own. They are eating other things.

We don't eat a lot of UPF. This isn't deliberate avoiding of it, it's just a side effect of having a couple of people with allergies in the house (including anaphylactic allergies) that mean a lot of prepared/processed stuff isn't an option and we need to make from scratch. But I've never made, and will never bother to make, chicken nuggets.

And we actually eat very cheaply. We spend a lot less than some of the figures I see whenever a thread about weekly grocery bills comes up.

In my case it's about prepping when I have the time,

I don't use her methods as I have my own system but The Batch Lady (she's active on all social media and has her own website) has lots of ideas for home cooked food prepared in advance that isn't just slow cooker type stuff.

but with your wedges example I'd probably be washing them, chopping them and par boiling them the day before at the same time as putting together that evenings meal. They would then be in the fridge ready to go straight in the airfryer for tea the night after.

a typical week for me is e.g a roast on a Sunday, but I'd cook up the mince etc for a lasagne or a cottage pie at the same time and assemble it all and it would go in the fridge ready to go straight in the oven on Monday night when I get back from work.

Tuesday would be chop an onion and make risotto with the stock and leftovers of the roast from Sunday (sometimes it's a rice stir fry with a bag of stir fry veg).

Wednesday we have after school activities so I microwave baked potatoes (sometimes in the morning during breakfast/ while I'm in the shower and then into the fridge!) and they crisp up nicely with a bit of olive oil in the airfryer. Alternatively it's omelettes or homemade soup (again often made in batches at a weekend and frozen).

Thursday is quite often fish baked in the oven in butter with boiled new potatoes and veg

friday is pizza or chips egg and sausages and beans which absolutely is processed unless I can be arsed to make it myself!

Saturday I'll make a batch of soup at some point and freeze some, and sat night we tend to have a nice meat/dauphinoise potatoes and roast veg type meal.

two primary school age children, two (more than) full time working parents in demanding jobs and no external help.

We have no choice but to cook from scratch most of the time due to some of the family being coeliac, and it is doable, but if I could use processed food more often I can absolutely see it would be tempting to do so!