Avoiding UPFs at breakfast

[Ayechinnyreckon]

After breakfast we eat virtually no UPFs but the kids breakfast is a huge issue.

They wake early and are hungry. They're 9&6 so can be trusted to go downstairs, get themselves some cereal and occupy themselves in the morning until we get up.

They eat cereal and pastries mainly until we get up and make a more substantial breakfast if they want it) 90mins - 2 hours later.

AIBU to want quick and easy breakfast that the DC can get themselves? So I don't have to get up at 5.30!

I know it's already been suggested, but I'm going to say it again... Overnight oats. We try and avoid cereal too, as the ones that the kids like are ultra processed and high in sugar.

With overnight oats, I've learned that the kids are more likely to have them once they find the right mix of toppings that they like. Both my kids will have the oats with a dash of honey, peanut butter, flaxseeds and mango (we get frozen mango and I take some out and put it in the fridge along with the overnight oats, so that they're defrosted by morning).
They heat up the oats in the microwave which helps the peanut butter to mix in better.

So true! The actual "time" I spend making sourdough is about 10minutes, but it takes 13 hours before I can eat it!

I have my own starter. I've just recently given away a fair amount to locals, I hate discarding it, so I don't! We just have pizza that week if I have far too much.

I've been keeping it alive since 2016 when I was given it. It's at least 10years old.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys! I've got lots of new things to try.

My eldest will also make himself toast and eggs on some days, but he only started this once he turned 11 and we were absolutely sure he knew how to safely use the hob and clean up after himself. Something for you to consider in a few years.

I like discard recipes as much as the bread.
I make pancakes and muffins with it, which the children love.
I'm making a batch of bagels today, which freeze well.

Could you serve a cheeseboard and leave it in the fridge with a selection of fruits, different home made bread and crackers.
You could even leave it, covered with foil, beside the bed.
Maybe a small glass of port?

Plain Greek yoghurt like Fage is not UPF. Or any plain yoghurt for that matter.
No plain yogurts are.
The ingredients are just milk and the bacteria used to culture the milk.

It's only yoghurt with added sugar or sweeteners, or thickeners that are an issue.

I'm sure the butler will do that.

Amazing thank you! The Christmas tree loaf looks so good 😊

I came to say this. It's just another thing aimed mostly at women to add guilt and work onto an already full plate (no pun intended).
Do you think men are spending a significant amount of time reconciling whether it's ok to give their child a specific type of jam in the morning? They're absolutely not.

it was men that started down the UPF and convinced woman (who were back int he 1950s) sorting breakfast to opt for cereals in a box, then it grew from there with companies making ready meals to where we are now - before that people had the same type of food they had for lunch and dinner at breakfast. Go to many other countries Brasil, Japan and they have last nights dinner reheated for breakfast

If you don't want to believe though that mass produced foods with high processing isn't anything to concern yourself about - thats your prerogative

One would hope so but it is becoming quite difficult to get the right sort of staff-still, that's a whole other thread.

Do your research and stop being so judgemental.

Sorry am not a podcast listener 🙂 what’s the jist of it if you don’t mind giving a quick recap?

The most important points are:

• There is no good single definition of UPFs. It all started with one scientific study from Brazil that was written in highly political language (one of the characteristics of a UPF is that it is made by a multinational company, so that would make Warburton's white sliced bread somehow less bad than Unilever's white sliced bread).
• The claim of the UPF people is that there is something specific about the processing aspect that makes foods more palatable, beyond fat and sugar. But there are no known mechanisms for this. A lot of people's acceptance of the UPF story is that it piggybacks on our existing narratives about fat and sugar/carbs.
• There are very few serious studies comparing UPFs with non-UPFs. They do discuss one small serious American study, but even there it's hard to sort out all the confounding — for example, if you give one group "unprocessed" quinoa salad versus "UPF" packaged macaroni cheese and see that people consume more calories of the latter, are you comparing the UPF-ness of the two, or the fact that macaroni cheese tastes better than quinoa salad even if it is made from scratch with £40/kilo farmer's market cheese and wholemeal pasta?

Nutritional epidemiology is hard, because you can't in practice get people to stick to their assigned diet. In that American study they got people to volunteer to essentially spend four weeks locked away from society (so they couldn't sneak out and get a Mars bar), which is incredibly expensive to do. It also means that you are only studying people who have an interest in nutrition and can take four weeks off work.

Basically there is very little that we can say about diet with any great degree of certainty. The science simply isn't there, and people like Chris van Tulleken are doing a disservice by pretending that it is. We know that people who eat a lot of fat, sugar, and UPFs have worse health outcomes, but we also know that people who eat a lot of foie gras live longer than those who don't, and in both cases the cause is likely to have a large amount of socioeconomic status in it (people who can afford foie gras can also often afford BUPA checkups).

You don’t need a study to know that eating healthily and making your own food ideally with local and seasonal produce is better for you and the environment.

You can FEEL this when you eat well and then eat something highly processed.

It’s common bloody sense!

Bake some bread. You can add raisins to make it a bit more breakfasty. Offer 100% peanut butter, or regular butter to spread on it. Fruit. I've got some homemade flapjack bars with mashed banana for sweetener and grated carrot (sounds a bit sad, but actually delicious) on the go at the moment for quick breakfast. Yoghurt with lots of fun toppings as mentioned by pp (chopped fruit, nuts, honey, seeds, homemade granola...) or overnight oats.

Buy a toaster???? I can't comprehend life without one...

@AhBiscuits

i get what you mean but if you go through a load a day then you’re gonna have to bake it everyday. I dunno when you’ve got so much else on and can just buy the bread ready made, I think just buy it! I’m all for making women’s lives easier! And I say women cos it is women I highly doubt OP’s kids father is fretting about the kids eating UPFs in the morning!

It makes me lol when people say things “offer peanut butter” to describe giving the kids breakfast, it’s not a restaurant!

I just mean put it out/remind the kids it's in the cupboard 😅Not sure what better way to put it...

@AhBiscuits "Bake your own! I make sourdough and it's so easy. A loaf costs me about 50p to make. It only contains flour, water and salt"

Does that include the cost of cooking the bread as well? How many do you make each time?

Alpen (which is one of the OP's existing picks) isn't too bad. None of the spookier additives and contains fibre, nuts, protein.

More sugar than ideal perhaps, but a hell of a lot more nourishing than Rice Krispies.

Alpen is 21% sugar.

A 45gm portion (which is tiny) is almost 2 teaspoons of sugar.

Dieticians class anything over 5% sugar as high.

@samarrange I truly don't know where you are getting your info from for your posts. You aren't linking to any real science.

UPFs damage the gut microbiome. There IS research and science on this. How you don't know of it is quite strange considering you're intent on saying there is none!

I'm sure though that you must have heard of or maybe read some of the science coming out of King's College London and the work of Prof Tim Spector and Sarah Berry. All on UPF and gut microbiome. The Twins study? Nothing to do with wealth or being able to choose their own food and stick to it.

There is also evidence that a healthy gut microbiome can make a 50% difference in a positive response to immunotherapy used in cancer (papers available online as evidence.)

Most of the stuff you're posting isn't right and it's a shame you don't realise this.

Also, @samarrange the 'fois gras' example you mention is called the 'French Paradox'. This is because in France where there is a higher intake of saturated fat, used their cooking (cream and butter) there is less heart disease than expected.

There are multiple reasons for this but one theory is that sugar and refined carbs are thought to be more dangerous re. CVD than animal fat because they cause inflammation, which narrows the arteries.

You do have to remember that Prof Tim Spector is also selling a product....