This UPF thing is irritating me

[SnowMoss]

I've never eaten much UPF, but it is getting harder and harder to avoid it. I don't go the whole 9 yards or anything, but try to keep myself informed and do my best to eat a healthy balanced diet.

Made a good effort to keep an eye on upf's, so for the past year have been sourcing good poultry, fish, and eating it with vegetables, etc. But I am bored out of my mind at this point! Just so fucking bored.

Then I hear about seed oils, so now even the small things that I added, such as mayo, gnocchi, the occasional flatbread (contains only sunflower oil, salt, wheat) are seen as a UPF too, due to the inclusion of sunflower or rapeseed oil. I am happy with and have the time to cook from scratch, but avoiding oils has basically taken a good whack at my time.
It's one thing trying to get people to eat a good diet, with veg and fruit and less processed meats, which will benefit their health, weight and wellbeing, but I am honest to god fed up of eating meat and a pile of veg, even if my own sauces and seasonings suffice.
And no, nothing substitutes for mayo! And no, I really don't want to make my own! I will make my own pesto, coleslaw, stuff like that, but I am bone bloody weary of avoidance.

Surely just being mindful is enough? I get that the food industry is an unregulated cesspit right now, but I am beginning to wonder just how awful it is, in moderation, to eat a some.
Sadly if I google any kind of additive or seed oil, I get lists of 'side effects' such as bloating, calcium loss and so on, it is so depressing.

If you are mindful of UPF's have you found a good balance?

To be frank, I think the daily mail is carcinogenic at this point.

Not quite accurate.

It doesn’t give you cancer, it is a cancer.

But again, even if I accept this - none of it means that the food industry isn’t knowingly harming people in pursuit of far greater profits than are in play in the ‘wellness’ industry.

the food industry is the exemplary late-capitalist phenomenon.

But again, even if I accept this - none of it means that the food industry isn’t knowingly harming people in pursuit of far greater profits than are in play in the ‘wellness’ industry.

I think both have skin in this game, so sadly who knows? Most people are aware that the large corporations are deeply suspect and actively happy to harm us, to harm kids. I hear a lot of voices demanding regulation, and I agree with them.

That doesn't mean that I can't also call out those who are hawking solutions and spreading fear at the other end of the spectrum either.
Why should we trust either?
I will go with moderation and seek advice via organisations with no bias or profit to be made, although this is vanishingly rare nowadays..

In a world riddled with chaos and uncertainty, food is one of the few things we can (most of us) control - I think the social media diet grifters are cashing in on that fear. I can think this at the same time as blaming corporate.

Agree entirely.

Big food are a powerful force. Look at the years it took to get a sugar tax and how the UK refuses to ban hydrogenated fats despite many other countries doing it - even some US states have banned them, and that’s the home of the poor dietary choices.

Someone slinging woo gut drinks isn’t compatible.

Also, it’s important not to dismiss the biome research because of some grifters on TikTok. There’s some good, interesting science behind much of it - but because it’s so individual, there’s no clear path to riches, so less research funding available.

Invent a new way to keep burger buns edible for longer using a modified bean starch and you might be able to sell it to McDonald’s for a fortune. What’s the equivalent for gutter bacteria? No one is making millions from kombucha.

I like how I'm still checking back on this thread whilst working on a painting and searching out ideas for a cheeseboard

Anyone who says they eat no UPF is either a liar or lives on a mountain top farm.

What is the point of living if you can't indulge in a bar of sodding chocolate or whatever if the craving takes.

That's probably because the people running those websites are under qualified influencers.
Additives are just ingredients added to food to make it last (eg pickling veg)
Emulsifiers just allow ingredients to mix that usually don't (eg egg yolk in mayo)
Processing is fine.
People just need to eat in moderation

All food is processed. I don't grow anything myself because I'm not sufficiently interested and i wouldn't put the time necessary in to doing it. My friend has an allotment and grows a lot but she loves being there amd will spend all weekend there sometimes. No food that anyone buys is completely unprocessed. It all goes through processes to get it from its natural state to the shelves.

That is very different to UPFs though and I don't eat those. My partner does so we still have them in the house but I never eat them. I don't want to 'indulge' in a bar of chocolate. I don't like the smell of it or the taste. Or crisps. We buy pig skin to make our own pork scratchings and I eat cheese for snacks. Sometimes with red wine. Both of which are processed.

But it isn't necessary to eat UPF foods. I don't even walk down most of the aisles in the supermarket.

If you make it yourself, yes, it's potato and flour. But I've just looked up the supermarket gnocchi ingredients and it's long.

That's the problem with a lot of it. People think, 'Whats the problem? It's only X, Y and Z."

Yes. It would be if you'd made it yourself. But not if you buy it pre made from the supermarket.

I used to have an eating disorder, I wasted so many years of my life reading packets and doing calculations, and it took me years to train myself not to look at food labels and I don't want to get sucked into that again.

I make my own food 90% of the time but yeah I have mayonnaise, ketchup, pesto, wraps etc. It probably would not occur to me to make my own flatbread.

Someone here once said stewed apple was a upf!
I've made a conscious decision to eat fewer upfs but I'm not about to make my own mayo.

SnowMoss I tried to quote your reply to me but it didn't work 🙄

I wouldn't have ordinarily cut out a whole food group. I never have before. And I don't think 'all carbs are bad'.

But I have looked at how I feel and how foods make my body feel.

I used to love a stone baked pizza but it wasn't worth the physical discomfort after eating it. My stomach would be distended and painful after eating it with the bloating. Pasta had the.same effect. Since cutting carbs out I never feel like that.

I also couldn't cope with the overwhelming tiredness and general fatigue. My job is tiring and I'm often exhausted when I get home. But I was fit for nothing in the evenings and would fall asleep by 7pm feeling a non specific 'ill' all the time. Now it's only mental tiredness and not the whole body fatigue and lethargy I used to feel and I actually have the energy and capacity to do things in the evenings.

I try to eat 'clean' most of the time. And it's had a huge impact on my skin, energy levels and even on my periods.

Its only occasionally that i fancy something i won't eat but it's never worth the after effects tbh.

I'm totally with you on the mozzarella, olives and olive oil though so one of my favourite lunches is mozzarella, olive oil salad.

I'm not sure why so many are saying they won't make their own mayo though. I do it every other Sunday for the fortnight and it literally takes 5 minutes!

@SnowMoss good flatbreads require quite a lot of fat to keep them soft. More than you might expect. So find a recipe which adds butter and oil. You can find mayo with no seed oil a brand called hunter gatherer makes it. Its not cheap!

@GreyCarpet homemade mayo normally lasts less than a week. Do you pasteurise your eggs? Fascinated to know how you do it

I keep it in a sealed jar in the fridge for a fortnight. I wouldn't risk it after that but never had any ill effects keeping it for a fortnight nor has it shown any of the signs of having gone off (change in texture, colour or smell).
I just make sure I use fresh eggs and don't eat it after the use by date of the eggs.

Hunter Gatherer is good but too expensive!

@Catza i think you’ve hit the nail on the head there - it’s actually pretty hard to get to the truth. I eat non upf as often as possible but not obsessively and I do this because I can trust myself but I don’t trust Unilever to have my best interests at heart.

I disagree that food is one of the things most of us can control. We can’t control the soil our food is grown in, or the sea or water, or the pollution in the air. We can’t individually control the conditions in the processing plants, or the climate. Only not eating is exerting full control - but that would kill you off faster than UPFs would. Most of us have a few choices, some people have more choices than others. Nobody has “control.”

Try and see if there is a local veg box in your area. Not large suppliers like Odd Box and Abel but an independent farm box. I live close to Somerset and we have a local farmer delivering across Glos, Avon and Somerset. They very rerely throw something in from abroad (like bananas) due to "popular demand" but the vast majority of their produce is from the local farmer collective. There were definitely pears last year. And a ton load of beetroot.

'just'?

Yes, they 'just' do this or that thing which increases shelf-life and therefore profits . But emulsifiers, thickeners, gums, stabilisers - all kill your gut microbiota to varying degrees.

And as many of us have said, we already know that the gut microbiome mediates many of our critical physical processes. It's like we've discovered a 'new' organ that can be damaged very easily by what we eat.

The health of our microbiome is really, really important, so while it clearly is better to moderate consumption than not moderate it, it's misguided or disingenuous to minimise the impact of the additives you mention.

It's rare for people to have a sudden heart attack and keel over in their prime though, more likely years of health issues which impact your quality of life. It's about increased health span.

I don’t live on a mountain top farm. I wish I did. it would be better than the shit hole Black Country hell hole I currently reside in.

Nor am I a liar.

I only eat meat (my main source of food), kefir, greek yogurt, eggs, nuts, some vegetables, sometimes lentils and chickpeas and salt, herbs and spices. Coconut oil, ghee, butter and olive oil. I occasionally have potatoes and rice if I want carbs, but not often. I don’t eat any other carbs as I am coeliac anyway so it’s not hard at all to abstain from bread and pasta as I’m not paying through the nose for free from stuff that tastes like shit anyway.

I don’t want chocolate anymore. Years of eating shit made me ill and obese. There was point in living my shit, unhealthy life of a few years ago.

I sometimes say I’d kill to eat a Greggs again (I think I said that on this thread yesterday), but I only say that to make joke. I wouldn’t.

Do you make your own kefir?

Most kefir is fermented, then pasteurised (for shelf life) and bacteria cultures re-introduced. The bacteria cultures are off-the-shelf, not made by the kefir producer. I don’t know if this counts as UPF, but it’s an interesting example of how health foods are not immune to the pressures of the food industry.

No, and I couldn’t give a shit about kefir.

I used to be 27 stone, a functioning alcoholic, lived off of processed food and takeaway, had undiagnosed celiac, chronic IBS, hashimotos, acne, nerve pain and was hurtling towards type 2 diabetes.

So no, I don’t knit my own yogurt. But my diet is as close to 100% clean as I can make it, ALL my health issues have disappeared, I am 15 stone lighter, I am on zero medication now at 45 and fuck me, if kefir being somewhat processed is some sort of gotcha, then yes, silly me! But you know what, I couldn’t give two shits.

It wasn’t a gotcha, it was a genuine question and a comment on how even the most ‘healthy’ things are not immune from industrialised processes.

I don’t give an organic fig what you eat, although it sounds like you’ve made very difficult and important changes to your lifestyle, which is really impressive.

But there is no need to be aggressive towards me because you wrongly interpreted my post as an attempt to undermine you.