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?

What about my flatbreads though?

Are those ingredients bad if consumed several times per week, that is the question.
I would of course not worry if it was once per month!

I suppose my point is, if I like something I am going to eat it fairly often. So, say, if I was going to eat cake, it wouldn't be often enough for me to worry about the UPF. I am only concerned about my regular diet.

L-Cysteine is amino-acid. Probably there if they used eggs or dairy. Dextrose is just corn sugar, nothing particularly concerning.

Op I really don't mean to put down your efforts but I assume your trying to avoid cancer causing food?

I honestly can't imagine Kate Middleton eats unhealthy and still managed to get cancer. If it's going to happen to you it will.

You can buy mayo without seed oils, although admittedly it's not cheap. A bit of rapeseed oil occasionally probably isn't the worst as the omega ratio isn't too horrific.
It is a pain though - plenty things that traditionally should contain just butter or just olive oil are stuffed full of seed oils for cheapness.

For bread, the Jason stuff has minimal ingredients, or if you buy a breadmaker it's very little effort to make your own, even sourdough.

Not sure if an option for you but the ingredients on one from my local Eastern European shop (and also sold at the Tesco Extra which is bit further for me) are: wheat flour, water, yeast, sugar, salt. No oil at all

We buy and freeze, use regularly for lots of meals
Pitta bread is an option in all supermarkets with few UPF ingredients too

I am 100% UPF free but that’s due to being coeliac.

I can’t afford processed gf food, and to be honest, it’s over priced, tastes like arse, gf “bread” (hahaha), pastas, cakes, biscuits etc aren’t worth the money for the tiny little bit you get, and Christ, if we were talking about food additives, look at all the shit in free from foods, it’s fucking ridiculous.

Luckliy, my husband is a great cook and makes Indian, Mexican and Thai food from scratch. But my diet is just mainly meat, fish, kefir, nuts, lentils and veg. I only use coconut oil and ghee but always have done being Indian.

Boring as all fuck really. I’d kill to be able to stuff down the entire Greggs counter again.

ETA - I even make my own mayo please someone shoot me.

I think the seed oil thing has been debunked in terms of the safety concerns. I personally choose to use olive oil for almost everything (goose fat for roasts), but I will have mayo with seed oils in and won't discount food that has seed oil in the ingredients.

What I find difficult is bearing the weight of my children's health. We don't yet know the true impact of UPF in the food chain as it hasn't been around prolifically until my own childhood, but we're seeing cancers etc rising. I want to do better for my kids, but it's a pretty thankless task when they are young and feel invincible and just want the UPFs!

Flatbreads:

Self-raising flour
Glug of olive oil
Salt
Enough natural yoghurt to make a sticky-ish dough

Don’t knead it, just bring it together with your hands and roll it out roughly flat and cook in a dry hot pan.

I eat about 80 per cent 'pure' ie cooking from single ingredients of decent quality. There are things I won't give up like mayo, but if I see a different brand I'll browse the ingredients in case it's better. I think that's fine.

I was coming on to recommend the crosta&mollica flatbreads but was beaten to it - we do sometimes make our own just with yoghurt and flour, but can't always be arsed so tend to use those ones. Though, I will occasionally use other brands even shock horror upf ones, when it's all that's available - it's very occasional though.

It's also pretty easy to get hold of non-upf mayonnaise now, M&S do a 'collection' one which is made with cold pressed olive oil, and there's various other brands. I only know this because I saw someone going on about how great M&S was for this stuff on tiktok - we don't really eat/ use enough of it for me to worry about it, but I may pick a jar up to try next time we need to buy it.

@ArtTheClown what mayo is that do you know? I buy Stoke's which is mostly UPF free but still has a lot of seed oil.

Yeah, you’re massively overthinking it and treating everything like it’s potentially poison. You’ll drive yourself demented if you carry on like that - it could easily become a type of orthorexia.

I have a very healthy diet generally, but I’m never going to be slaving over home made mayo; there are lots of decent brands that don’t contain modified corn starch and all that bilge. I do check labels and make considered choices, but not to the extent that I’m going be denying myself the odd tin of baked beans or blob of ketchup.

Health advice is generally based on averages across the population, and you have to remember that a lot of people in the UK have a diet based heavily on ready meals, junk food and takeaways. A lot of the educational information around UPFs is intended to reduce obesity, diabetes, heart disease etc in that segment of the population, not scare the snot out of people who already eat a basically healthy diet.

If you cook from scratch and eat salad and vegetables, you’re already way ahead of the curve and protecting your health in really positive ways, so there’s really no need to stress that much about it!

Honestly, I don't give it a second thought.

Seed oils are not poisonous, despite what "wellness gurus" would have us believe.

I eat plenty of fresh fruit and veg, fish, meat, eggs, and dairy. I also bake a lot of my own sweet treats.

I really do not think my health is going to suffer because I also eat white bread.

I'd take a guess that a lot of the evidence against UPFs is that there's a correlation between people who eat a lot of UPFs and people who live off a diet low in vitamins and laden with fat and salt. A microwave burger is terrible for you for many reasons, but containing UPFs is near the bottom of the list.

I agree with a roughly 80/20 approach.

Going non-UPF is a form of restricted eating in its own right and it's not healthy to be all-consuming about ANY approach to eating.

Try and eat more fresh stuff and limit/moderate processed stuff when you can. Simples.

I don’t understand how you’re boarded of meat/fish and veg? There are so many options.

Moussaka
Chicken curry
Spicy pork chops, potato wedges and veg
Sea bass with ginger and soy and pak choi etc
Homemade burgers
Salmon risotto
etc etc

No one in the whole world can tell you if eating those flatbreads a few times a week will cause, you personally, any harm - just like no one can tell you if drinking a glass of wine a couple of times a week will do you personally any harm. All of these things, at most, increase the risk of certain conditions, usually pretty minimally. If eating the flatbreads allows you to eat an overall healthy meal that you enjoy then I think it's worth the risk, personally. There is no perfect diet and I don't think driving yourself mad trying is either healthy or likely to end with you being happier overall.

I went down a rabbit hole of trying to avoid UPFs last year and ultimately, you're right.... it's almost impossible to avoid them entirely.

I've now settled on a balance of 80/20. If 80% of what I consume is natural and UPF free then I don't worry about the other 20%. Tim Spector and Chris Van Tulleken both advise moderation and acknowledge that it's extremely difficult to entirely avoid them.

I focused on the main culprits in our daily diet. Bread I now make my own, or I buy Jasons sliced sourdough or Crosta and Mollica flatbreads. I've swapped flavoured yoghurt for plain greek yoghurt with fruit and breakfast cereal is shredded wheat, porridge or one of the UPF free granolas. I swapped sliced ham for parma ham or serrano. Dinners are homemade and I limit jarred sauces. Olive oil or cold pressed rapeseed oil at home and most of my meals are made at home rather than eating out.

Doing all the above has been very easy and just a case of making some mindful swaps. I feel better but don't sweat it if I go for a meal out or want some crumpets once in a while! It isn't going to undo all the other positive changes.

I think some awareness and a bit of moderation is key.

Oddly no, it isn't about avoiding disease. I hadn't looked at it like that. I think I just want to keep things as close to nature as possible. I also understand that this argument would open up other, more questionable concepts such as avoiding modern healthcare, building methods, etc. I am not one of those people! I like my vaccines

I don't particularly think people live longer avoiding occasional UPF. People will always die one way or another. I just dont like how industrialised food production has debased our stuff. So I guess my interest is more about anger with that than disease.

I agree with others. It's about balance.
Bit of upf there and there does not kill anyone. I am quite a 80-20 person as others here. I believe that is absolute reasonable.

When I really fancy bought breaded chicken strips I balance it with yogurt and kefir dipping sauce sometimes 😂

People! Where are these crosta and mollica flatbreads???

I can only find the tortilla wraps, panini's and pugliese.

Are you referring to the wraps? If so I meant the pizza base type of flatbread that is thicker. Not sure why C&M call those circular wraps 'flatbreads' tbh.

Sadly MN won't let me post a link or picture.

I’m with you on that. I’m slim. I eat what I fancy, in moderation. I don’t even worry about anything like UPF’s. I am not sure why I should honestly? What would it get me?

I’m not a scientist but what is specifically the ‘crap’ in that? It is a list of chemicals but we are made up of chemicals. I have no idea from that list what is wrong with it? Stabilisers keep a product literally stable, preservative keeps them from spoiling. Citric acid is literally from citrus fruits- you have it if you eat a lemon. Nothing in that suggests that it’s anything wrong with those ingredients. They just help keep the product from going rotten in a short period.

Flatbread seems to be a very vague term and can mean almost any kind of bread which is flatt-ish.

Crosta and Millica make flatbread with olive oil.

What's the point in living forever if it's going to be a life of misery? I'd rather die young and actually enjoy it.