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.

disagree with the idea it's just another way to body shame women. We are the unhealthiest we've ever been! UPFs expose us to more risk of obesity, cancer etc etc. If we can reverse that - great. Why anyone would want to pin this as another reason to shame women really is ridiculous. If "body positivity" means accepting dangerous levels obesity, disease and poor nutrition for us and our kids and ignoring the risks then I'm against it 100%. No I don't believe we should be berating ourselves over being a bit overweight or eating occasional UPF. However we should not avoid looking at the difficult stuff and the causes of it under the guise of "body positivity".

In my defence, supermarket breads, including from the bakery section, ARE UPF.

I think it was originally Michael Pollan (whose books are well worth a read.)

I'm by no means an UPF evangelist, we eat low UPF as a family by default for other dietary reasons, but it's no more effort for me to put some chicken thighs on a roasting tray and boil some new potatoes and veg on the hob while they are roasting than it is to put some chicken kievs on a tray and air fry some chips and boil some frozen peas.

Completely agree.

We also have dietary reasons for not much UPF (one coeliac, plus someone with anaphylactic nut allergies mean that a lot of processed food is either not an option, or very expensive eg gluten free bread).

We both work full time, I'm studying for a professional qualification and we have two young children. I really don't agree that it takes ages to cook from scratch. If someone doesn't want to, then fair enough. But we're really not people with endless time on our hands to spend cooking either.

I think that regulation may be required eventually but we can't realistically do that while it's still really unclear what the actual target is.
We've established that diets high in UPF as per the Nova system are bad for us, but don't really know how or why or what aspects. This government round table document is good, if frustrating, on how much we don't know and how difficult it will be to find the answers.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ultra-processed-food-upfs/ultra-processed-food-html#:~:text=There%20is%20evidence%20that%20people,et%20al.%2C%202023).
In the meantime we can address advertising and labelling, maybe clamp down on misleading health claims like the sweets which plaster "natural colourings" on a product which is 90% sugar and 9.9% god knows what.

And educate people that lowering your consumption of stuff with large numbers of lab-derived ingredients is better than carrying on as before. Even if not everyone can or wants to act on that information. Because business as usual is killing people.

I think we turn to our own experiences too easily and think “I can do it so why can’t that person”

I don't think this because I really don't care what other people eat. That's up to them, and none of my business. My only issue is with people saying eating low UPF is only possible if you're rich with loads of time on your hands, which just isn't true.

I'm disabled and often don't have the energy to prepare and cook so probably will have a high UPF diet but there's quite a sneery attitude with UPF that people should be making everything from scratch and lazy if they don't and it effects a bigger range of food than some past food trends like low fat.

We already knew it's better to eat more fruit, veg and whole foods and it's easier to avoid any extra ingredients being added if not manufactured. To be honest with all the forever chemicals, micro plastics and pollution which also ends up in what we eat I feel like it's a waste of energy worrying about it all.

Basic dried pasta is just wheat flour paste flattened into sheets, cut into bits and dried for long term storage. The Italians have been eating it since the end of the Middle Ages.

" it's no more effort for me to put some chicken thighs on a roasting tray and boil some new potatoes and veg on the hob while they are roasting than it is to put some chicken kievs on a tray and air fry some chips and boil some frozen peas."

I would consider both of those very time consuming compared to having something on toast or a microwave meal.

That’s not true. I grew up really poor and we had barely any processed food.Its not a fad to eat a wide variety of food while trying to cut down on upfs. Upfs aren’t really ‘food’. You can eat baked beans, cheese, some bread, plain yoghurt, salted crisps, some chocolate, some biscuits-I buy shortbread-without eating lots of upfs. Tinned vegetables are not upfs. Plain oven chips aren’t upfs. Hardly faddy eating.

No it's not bollocks designed to "make women hate their bodies" and that is a really privileged statement to make.

There is significant evidence that there has been a huge increase in autoimmune conditions and a dramatically increased prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease, especially in children. Back in the 70s IBD in children was extremely rare; now we have children aged 2 being diagnosed. My daughter had it from age 6 or so, diagnosed at 11.

https://www.uhs.nhs.uk/whats-new/news/study-shows-cases-of-inflammatory-bowel-disease-in-children-doubles-in-10-years#:~:text=Approximately%201%2C750%20children%20and%20young,treated%20at%20Southampton%20Children's%20Hospital.

There is research evidence that certain emulsifiers, gums and carageenans and maltodextrin destroy gut flora and the human microbiome. Some emulsifiers (soy lecithin, mono and diglyercides of fatty acids) are less bad but some cause significant changes.
Here is one recent piece of research.

https://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-020-00996-6

Maltodextrin, for example, is the biggest ingredient in many brands of instant gravy and used in a lot of gluten free alternatives. Yet there is research evidence that it destroys aspects of the microbiome.

My beef is with the food industry and the diet industry. They told us that low fat alternatives (full of emulsifiers for mouth feel) are healthier. They told us that if you get digestive issues you might want to try gluten free foods - choc full of maltodextrin to avoid wheat starch, and emulsifiers to bind it together. They suggested we go vegan for our health and then made UPF vegan "meat".

It is better to eat food as close to how nature intended. If you are lucky, eating UPF good as per standard Western diet is not going to cause you a lifetime of dealing with an incurable autoimmune condition. My daughter unfortunately wasn't so lucky and is now on omeprazole, mesalazine, immune suppressant azathioprine, and biologic immune suppressant infliximab until they stop working for her. She has 3 monthly blood tests to check these meds haven't stopped her liver from working effectively. She has quadruple the chance of developing lymphoma because of the drug regime, and has to wear sunscreen every day to reduce her chance of skin cancer. She has delayed puberty. In a flare she becomes so anaemic that her heart rate is 120 BPM just walking.

So no, it's not the latest fad. It's research based and it's a scandal in my opinion.

This! Tray bakes are easy, quick and convenient. New potatoes, carrots, onion, pepper any veg you like with some chicken thighs some salt pepper and paprika. Drizzle with a little olive and stick in oven. You can make many variations with different veg, herbs and spices and it literally takes 5 mins to throw together and then it cooks while you get on with other stuff. There are plenty of ways to eat low UPF without it being terribly time consuming.

Most baked beans and bread are UPF aren't they?
You said some bread, but which ones? Seeing as even supermarket bakery ones seem to be UPF. Are bakery ones OK?

Plain yoghurt definitely.

Which crisps, chocolate and biscuits are non-UPF and how would you identify them?

That was a pretty shallow article in the Guardian.
With a breadmaker it takes 5 minutes to prepare a loaf of decent everyday bread. Barring a million excuses re space, electric, special diets etc it's hard to think of a "gadget" that pays for itself so many times over. Yes the bread isn't soft white and square, and it doesn't keep for two weeks, because, you know, it's real bread.

How long does it keep? It's a real concern for people who live alone. Fridge and frozen bread doesn't taste as nice imo.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a bread maker because I wouldn't trust myself to keep using it.

No, not sure why you would think that. Most pasta that you buy in the supermarket is just durum wheat semolina and water. Even egg pasta isn't UPF.

The traditional diets of pretty much all cultures are a lot healthier than the modern western diet, because even though the cuisines and indeed ingredients are very different from one another, what they have in common is that they consist largely of foods in or close to their natural state. Whereas an alarming proportion of what many western people eat was made in a factory.

And of course, the western diet is no longer confined to the west. It is spreading across the world, dragging obesity, type 2 diabetes and a whole load of other metabolic problems in its wake.

Which crisps, chocolate and biscuits are non-UPF and how would you identify them?

Most ready salted crisps are ok.
Biscuits - shortbread and ginger biscuits are often ok.

I have a bread maker and a loaf cooks overnight in it. A bag of bread flour is 1 pound.

I find certain brands are good - Bonne maman, crosta and mollica, mutti, deliciously ella

Chocolate is tricky and gets allowed in our 80:20 ratio. Though we do use cacao or cocoa to make chocolate cookies and cakes at home.

Each of these is a "premium" brand I suppose but we seem to eat less. For example, I used to buy Tesco pizzas for the kids and they would have one each at 3.50 a pizza. Now they have crosta and mollica pinza which is 3.50 each and less than half the size, but they have a salad on the side and no one complains they are hungry.

((Who in the history of forever has ever bothered making homemade chicken nuggets??))

Me! Ditto fish fingers.

I disagree that cooking from scratch is unachievable for the less wealthy or full-time workers. Like everything in life, if you have a routine then most chores swing along fairly quickly; or at least quicker than you imagined it would.

I hated cooking when living with my parents, but got interested once I was oin charge of my own food, and got into the habit of cooking from scratch straight away. Once children came along, I adapted them to my cooking routines, not the other way round.

I found myself able to work full time and still come home and cook early for two toddlers and later for two adults (DH did his share of cooking too). Later, as a single parent on benefits, I didn't resort to pre-made foodstuffs as none of us had a taste for it, and it didn't work out any cheaper in the long run.

I like to think it has paid off as my now-adult DC both cook from scratch, enjoy exploring food and are possibly better cooks than I ever could be, and they manage this while working and studying at university. They still come to me for home-made bread and soup though.

Ideally a traffic light system would be good for showing how much something was UPF. Some of tbe replies on this thread show that some people just won't take the time to check for themselves. We have question after question from some posters about what is and what isn't UPF. Most of these answers can be found with a quick Google. If people aren't willing to do that then a red, amber, green code in the way we do for fat, sugar etc. That way something that was not UPF at all would be green. Something that had say one or two ingredients that were UPF would be amber and anything with the majority of its make up would be red. People could then make choices based on this. So.etumes it may just be a case of changing brands to go from very UPF to not. At least it would be a starting point for making that decision.

Surely the chicken thighs will take much longer to bake than the vegetables (45 min.?, so it's not a case of "bung everything into the oven" at the same time. For you people with lots of experience everything seems easy, but it's not.

🤣🤣🤣

Kids are taught to cook. I used to teach DT. They have to be taught proper food by law.

Bit the government doesn’t prioritise it, they have an hour every fortnight. But all the budgeting, planning, menus etc aren’t taught, as there is no time. And l don’t think there ever will be. This would take 3 hours per week. We did this in 1979. I hated it however.

I still hate cooking now. My ds loves it.

That’s my quote! I cook from scratch too, I just would never have bothered replicating a frozen meal, and it struck me as a bit of a limited comparison (although someone did point out that schnitzel is really popular in Germany, Poland, Austria, etc. and really quick and easy to make).

When I was super skint (and time poor) I tended to make dhal and chapatis as my go-to meal – it was the most cost effective way I found to make my money go as far as possible. And one pot could last me through the week, so was also super quick and convenient.

I agree that cooking normal unprocessed food yourself is affordable and achievable including if you’re poor and stretched for time (based on my own experience) – if that’s what you want to do. For some people it’s just not a priority or a preference and that’s fine as well and no one’s business but your own. Each to their own!

@Gwenhwyfar to answer the question home made bread freezes well half a loaf at a time and wholemeal is good for about 3 days. It has more substance/structure than shop bread.

It comes down to how much hassle/inconvenience/extra work we are prepared to put up with to improve our diets. It would be a lot easier if real/healthy/non UPF food was cheaper and more available.