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.

Even bought wraps would be far better than smilies or fish fingers. I don't make my own wraps but I fill them with veggies and beans.

UPFs have been known to be bad for you for decades. My parents wouldn't let us eat this stuff in the 80s.

What is irritating about the current UPF deabte is people with little understanding of food evangelically grasping on the processed bit and declaring any food with even the smallest amount of processing to be terrible - which make normal people feel hopeless and under attack.

Fruit yoghurts is a key one. Yes some fruit yoghurts are not great but the Yeo Valley strawberry yoghurt I ate yesterday simply contained milk, strawberry puree, sugar, corn starch and citric acid - all perfectly fine ingredients the average domestic cook uses.

I had someone confidently tell me yesterday things count as UPF if they contained corn starch - that is common or garden corn flour - used by home cooks for eons to thicken sauces and gravies.

Nobody said it was wrong nor impossible. I was merely pointing out that shop bought wraps is a trade off I personally and happily make. I can join the conversation too with this contribution. 😂Less than an hour is still far too much time for me to make some wraps but I do spend longer making other things that I personally will not buy in a shop.

Well there you go then. The conversation about homemade wraps wasn't asserting that everyone had to make them; OP was saying it's too time-consuming to make bread. It isn't too time consuming flat out, and like another poster commented, the odd store bought wrap is fine. A store bought wrap with veggies and beans is better than a meal of frozen fishfingers and potato smilies.

My point is that people flat out saying it's too time consuming, full stop, aren't necessarily correct either.

@Ginmonkeyagain Yes! Totally agree

For me the question is why is finding every excuse under the sun for not cooking at home so important? I would assume that by now everyone intuitively knows that this stuff is bad for health, it’s enough to look around (or into the mirror) without reading the UPF book.

The very existence of products like Zoe, which charge enormous amounts for coaching people towards simple and cheap foods that have been eaten for centuries by busy people with large families without freezers, air fryers or bread makers is a sign that developed countries with high obesity rates are damaged beyond repair.

I had an ED for 6 or 7 years in my late teens/early 20s, and one of the things that helped my recovery was a holiday abroad, where I couldn't buy my "safe" low calorie, low fat foods. But was eating bread, butter, oil, full fat yoghurt, fruit, vegetables, fish etc. And I decided I would try to eat more "real foods" like bakery bread, or butter rather than look for margarine with only 10% fat for example.
I think I eat reasonably healthy and cook most meals from scratch but I eat bread, wraps etc that I haven't made, and would use shop bought mayonnaise, ketchup, teriyaki sauce....and I do eat kitkats! I find all the stuff about UPF quite stressful and I feel I wasted days if not months of my life analysing food and labels and I don't want to go back to that.

You’re seriously saying that making slightly different food choices is ‘not a realistic way to live’?! I’d say 90% of the actual world cooks fresh meals without UPF!

This thread is filled with people saying that it’s really very easy to make small changes. It sounds like you’re just making excuses because you don’t want to cut out UPF (which is fine - your choice) but it bothers you that other people are. The excuses you’re making are very weak - I simply defrost anything I need to defrost overnight? It really doesn’t take time. My bread maker isn’t that big at all, nor was it expensive, and like I said, it makes the bread for me. I make my own yoghurt by chucking milk into the small and very affordable machine. It literally makes the yoghurt by itself and I do nothing. It takes about 25 seconds for me to take the milk from the fridge and pour it in. Hardly time consuming or expensive.

It’s absolutely fine if cutting out UPF is not a priority to you, but it’s pretty toxic how you can’t simple have a different opinion to others without being so patronizing and undermining and acting like anyone who makes the effort is simply super privileged (no, sorry, some people just have this as a priority and make the effort without being rich and have endless time on their hands?!) and also brainwashed and stupid. Like I said, I single handedly work full time, raise two kids, study for an MA and still find time to feed us without UPF and it’s just not that difficult! I’d love to say it is SO hard and I’m just really really smart and organized but I’m simply not. It’s just genuinely not that hard!

Fantastic, well done

As for being made to feel crap about my body - like a PP, I feel extremely empowered by making healthy choices and finding new and interesting ways to feed my family. I don’t feel crap about myself at all. Understanding food has given me a healthier body image then I’ve ever had and I feel proud of my progress - from a teen with an ED to an unhealthy uni student who ate processed junk, to finally realizing that there is a different way to live and choosing to embrace it and not include UPF in my diet. I’ve improved my mental and physical health and feel great! I’m not militant about it and wouldn’t stop my kid eating UPF if, say, we go to visit a grandparent in the UK and they feed them some. But for me it’s easy and enjoyable to make my own food from scratch, and even with an incredibly busy life, it’s easy to make small changes.

I agree.

Judging by some of the comments on this thread alone, shame is a big part of it; people don't like admitting that they're wrong. They know the potato smilies aren't as healthy as actual potatoes. They know that bag of crisps they grab and give to their child on the way back from school is unhealthy. But it's easy, it takes less effort than five mins chopping a potato, or preparing a snack of fruit and nuts/hummus and veggie sticks.

They scream balance, but it isn't really balance when you look deeper at what they're consuming. And they know that, too, but they don't like looking deeper because then they feel ashamed.

It's easy, it's addictive. It's "the norm" to go and have that weekly takeaway, or that iced latte on a Monday morning. Everyone else is doing it, so it can't be that bad, right?

Yet at the same time these people will be complaining about their weight, or how bad their skin is, how exhausted they are. But everyone is this size now, so they don't stand out.

And so as soon as it's brought up, they become defensive and invent every excuse in the book not to change, despite evidence showing it's healthy, cheap, and perfectly doable. It's sad, really. I worry about the next generation.

Alternatively Loyd Grossman jars aren't UPF. Open, warm through, add some frozen peas.

It's not even particularly targeted at women!

The book doesn’t really shame anyone for their food choices, quite the reverse. A bit that has really stayed with me is the detail about the manufacturer of Magnums adding scent to the wrapper- the actual Magnum doesn’t smell because it’s too cold so to make it more enticing they scent the wrapper so you get that chocolate/caramel hit immediately.

There is a whole industry devoted to trying to increase the amount of UPF that we all eat- not because they want to harm us, just because it’s the duty of directors to maximise returns for shareholders and that means increasing sales 🤷‍♀️ It’s not a fair fight. Once you realise that, the case for simply “educating” the public about UPF seems a lot weaker (calls for more education are really just calls for the status quo) and the case for regulating food manufacturers seems a lot stronger.

I think your post/rant is spectacularly ignorant about why many (if we go by levels of obesity) don’t cook from scratch and why many buy UPFs - and crucially why it might not be a priority in their lives as it is in yours. Yes, of course many will just be lazy but it goes without saying that poverty is far more complex than that.

If it was so simple to crack, everyone would be slim and healthy.

This is so bleeding obvious that even Van Tullekan doesn’t go into huge amounts of depth about it in his book and focuses on it at a higher corporation level instead.

I think if we can just make small adjustments- move away from chicken nuggets and smilies to bought wraps or pita bread filled with veggies and better chicken- that will help.

Or even pasta with a sauce made of tinned tomatoes with frozen peas is better than fish fingers and such. Frozen veggies are a lifesaver for me.

Doesn't have to be all or nothing. We don't have to make our own pasta.

I hate cooking.
Batch cooking helps a bit, but still involves cooking, just a bit less often.
What would help me is tips on how to put salady types foods together and also some tinned foods are simply processed rather than upf.

It seems to me that literally the only person shaming anyone on this thread is you?! You’re undermining the effort and time that people here have made and your calling people privileged who aren’t - which is the easiest way to undermine someone who has made an effort. The other posters who have cut out UPFs are simply saying that they haven’t found it as hard or time consuming as you’re insisting it is. Why aren’t you listening to their experience and just acting like they’re so privileged?! The busy day you described of a mum in your previous post sounds very similar to my own day - except for the food. It takes me no longer to prepare a quick healthy meal than it would take for fish fingers and ‘smilies’ to cook in an oven, yet you’re insisting that it does?! Or that the people who make non-UPF foods just have more time on their hands?!

The most sensible post on this thread.

There’s obviously middle ground between smiley faces and turkey twizzlers and making every single thing from scratch.

I’m not saying that people don’t have reasons not to cook from scratch. If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll see I haven’t even said people SHOULD cut out UPFs. I simply resent the implication that someone who cooks from scratch is in some way less busy or more privileged that someone who doesn’t. It’s simply a matter of priority.

What kind of salady stuff do you like? The ones I've been loving this summer have been:

Leaves/lettuce of your choice
Grilled/fried chopped tomatoes in olive oil with a bit of chilli. Leave them a bit chunky
Beetroot chunks
Sweetcorn
Cucumber
Carrot ribbons
Olives
Pan fried salmon
Baby potatoes with a pat of butter and salt.

All mixed together in a bowl and it's lovely. You could swap out different ingredients, say salmon for tuna, butter beans, chicken, etc.

Homemade hummus is really easy and you get loads and it lasts good. That with some slices of cheese, some baby potatoes, salad mix of choice.

Prawns fried in garlic, chilli and coriander butter with salad and sweet potato wedges. Or even with a pitta bread is nice.

I mean I was taught to cook by my dad as well who is a brilliant cook, and also worked a manual job, but he also got home at 17.10 every evening so that's why he had the time.

We actually don't eat very much UPF at all- we mostly cook from scratch. I've got an allotment (lucky me). But it's not outside my imagination to understand all the trade-offs people make- approx 25% of the kids at DC's school are picked up by a teenage sibling while parents move on to their evening shift job. It's probably chips and waffles on a tray while the sibling does homework. The ASC my kids go to sometimes serves UPF stuff, I can't get worked up by it- we need to work.

The question isn't- why can't the family stop using UPF. The question is why we have a society where those parents have to work double shifts to make ends meet, why there isnt enough spare money to take a risk on a meal, why there isn't free, good quality wraparound childcare, where there is no accessible supermarket etc. In that context, fed- even if it's waffles and beans on a tray- is an act of care and love. Food systems interlink with other things in society- poverty, housing, transport etc. People don't make choices in a vacuum.

It also bothers me the suggestion that we are all a bit sim and have been brainwashed by these mysterious men who are making money from convincing us UPF are bad? 😂

A machine for making yogurt is called a jar. A non-UHT milk is poured into a jar, left outside and it turns into fermented milk in 24-48h, depending on the temperature outside. Alternatively the process can be initiated with a starter leftovers of a plain yogurt, kefir, onaka or buttermilk so the initial investment would be an extra cost of the product.

It’s quite sad that people can be convinced to buy a special machine to attempt the most basic food preservation method in the Northern Hemisphere since forever.

Yes, the basic problem is people needing to make money out of food.
There's just not as much money to be made out of fresh produce. I have been thinking of some opportunities though e.g. people working as cooks eg preparing the food for a few families for a number of days and delivering them so healthy ready meals in a way, an expansion of the kind of thing Hello Fresh do so ingredients packs in supermarkets so you don't have to go around buying everything separately and meal planning services. I'd like to see healthy convenience food.
Where I live we have a healthy self several restaurant selling organic veggies. It's the kind of place that could move to non-upf.