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?

Please can you tell me the exact sentence you use to put your kids off cheese strings? I don’t buy them but my child pesters me for them all the time and always seems to get them at other peoples houses. Can you help me fight the battle please?!

I don't think wanting to be informed about the research and to avoid unhealthy ingredients necessarily means you are 'obsessed' with what you eat.

Join some of the upf Facebook groups - they are helpful for people trying to reduce, and the extreme no seed oil bunch generally don't get a lot of sympathy.

If we believed everything that is written about foods we wouldn't eat anything again. Everything in moderation, life is too short.

@IcedPurple I think people are taking it too far though
I see it on FB where people were posting how awful processed food was and ingredients
About a ready meal that had nothing in it you wouldn't cook with at home

Hate to say it, but I find buying branded makes things easier. Heniz salad cream is ok, but the own brand is UPF full

Urgh Ill be the one to say it ... but, I am convinced that over-consumption of seed oils, coke lite and diet bars (coupled with stress) caused my inflammatory breast cancer back in 2023. I have completely overhauled my diet due to everything I read at the time of my diagnosis. In animal studies, omega-6 PUFAs have a strong mammary tumor-enhancing effect. I now eat about 90 % of the time plant-based and 10 % is for the odd UPF (which I feel rubbish after eating so probably even less now). Am a total convert to Dr Greger and his daily dozen (but as I said I will eat the odd crap as it kindof reinforces how much non processed food actually tastes).

It's often cheaper. Crosta and mollica flatbread Vs upf supermarket versions. Posh houmous Vs supermarket versions. Sliced loaf Vs sourdough.

I think most importantly it's how you feel after you've eaten. If you feel uncomfortable, bloated tired etc look at what might have caused it. If you're eating what you like and feel good then crack on. Everything in moderation and just be consistently average in your choices.

This is misguided. The best evidence we have, from meta-analyses of human randomised controlled trials, consistently show that saturated fats are more detrimental to heart health compared to unsaturated fats.

Yes, I just don't eat very much UPF, only occasionally. It's not that difficult and a little won't harm you.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/magazine/ozempic-junk-food.html
Anyone got a subscription to get round the pay wall? My daughter managed to read some of it and it sounds awful, my understanding of it is upf foods are being designed to overcome the appetite suppression effects of weight loss drugs! Wtf??

Overall I think it's a good thing that awareness of UPFs has increased, it's made it clear just how much shite companies are putting in their industrially produced edible substances food. Of course they're pushing back on people avoiding their products and wanging on about how their crappy cereal or whatever is "fortified with fibre" - they know they can't invent their way out of this like they could the low-fat/low-sugar movements, so it will hit their profits unless they can come up with a ruse to keep us munching their products.

That said, it's impossible to avoid. You'd never eat out again, or at anyone else's house for a start. I just cook from scratch as much as I can, use animal fat (butter, lard, fa left over from roasting meat) or EV olive oil to avoid highly processed oils as much as I can and eat less processed foods overall. It's not a perfect system but the NOVA classification helps: there's an app called Open Food Facts (the logo looks like an orange/magnifying glass together) which you can use to scan bar codes.

But all of that said, I bloody love Chinese cooking sauces which are all as UPF as hell. And you'd prise the occasional McDonalds out of my cold dead hands

Keeping it to a minimum seems to be the key, along with avoiding beating yourself up for the odd Greggs!

You can choose to make bread without those ingredients (or I assume buy in bakeries!) - the issue is it will go stale much quicker. That is ultimately the trade off. In my house we don’t eat bread very fast so we need it to last a good week.

We buy bread from the bakery, where they slice it to your choice of thickness, and freeze it, taking out a few slices each morning. It's not a faff, and surely week-old bread is going to have at least traces of mould? That can't be good.

That's ridiculous.
That is a serious mental health issue and has nothing to do with overthinking a bit of UPF, which is quite common on mumsnet. In fact comment such as this make light of real mental health issues. Orthorexia included.
Like I said earlier, I suspect a class/cultural divide on this issue, so it would be great if each side could quit calling others 'disordered' for holding a different opinion.

You likely have issues in your life that cause you concern which would mean nothing to me, I would not chide you for that.

If you require an excuse to eat UPF , you have my permission. But don't diagnose people with illness over the internet because they want to discuss nutrition.

Try this link to an archived version: https://archive.ph/3Rsg1

Agree with the moderation mantra, but it seems we all have a different version of what life being too short actually is. I guess food chat never ends well on here

Like I said earlier, I suspect a class/cultural divide on this issue

And I'm amazed no one else has picked you up on this because I still think it is bonkers as I said a few pages ago.

Needlessly fretting over food is not inherently classy. Such a weird take.

I agree. Avoid obvious crap as much as you can. And check ingredients which have a list of unreadable ingredients as long as your arm. 👍

Well, 'classy' has nothing to do with actual class.

There are different cultural attitudes to how we approach food, as is evident all over MN. Not entirely, but largely. To pretend class and cultural values don't inform our tastes and beliefs is what I'd call bonkers.

Just make your own food within reason, and go for an 80-20, or 90-10 approach.

I've never eaten a flat bread , so I don't get your angst over that.

A tiny amount of seed oil isn't going to make a huge difference.

Neither is a teaspoon of mayo once a week. (Although there are some decent ones out there without a load of crap in them.)

What you need to focus on is whether you're eating lots of UPFs every day and how you can reduce those.

I honestly don't mean this to sound snarky (like people often are on here) as I know what it's like to have severe anxiety/obsessive thoughts, but you seem to be down a slight rabbit hole with this. I think you need to stop googling for the sake of your mental health! I am pretty committed to eating well (e.g. I don't drink fizzy drinks and I make the effort to go to the bakery a few times a week for sourdough (£££) instead of buying supermarket bread), but I still enjoy a bit of mayo, the occasional supermarket baked item, etc. As long as the majority of what you consume aligns with your principles, I honestly think it's totally fine. Happiness, fulfilment and lack of stress are massive contributors to physical health as well.

The only thing I'd strictly avoid is palm oil and that's as much for ethical reasons as health ones.

Like I said earlier, I suspect a class/cultural divide on this issue

It's going to be a given though, isn't it, that those who've got more time to cook and shop, as well as the skills/equipment to cook, AND time to read around the subject AND have got the money to buy more expensive ingredients are going to be the ones who eat better and are better off. If I go into Aldi and look at the average trolley, and compare it to the average trolley in Waitrose, they're going to be very different things.

But I also notice that the people shopping in my local Asian supermarket are mostly buying fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, rice, spices, herbs etc. It's not the most well-off area but culturally there doesn't seem to be as much emphasis on crappy UPF stuff, so it doesn't necessarily follow that less well off = poor diet.

That's a pretty huge presumption right there!
How do you know I google more than once per month? Or once every six months? How do you know whether this popped into my head since it is irritating, or whether I am a hopeless nutjob?

You don't.

It is very common on MN to accuse an OP of overthinking, obsession or mental illness because they discuss something that occurs to or irritates them. It is a very all or nothing, swooping presumption that generally represents having nothing whatsoever of worthwhile use to say on a subject.

Just use olive oil instead- unfiltered, virgin, ideally.

A small amount of butter is fine- like a teaspoon a day.

BTW the jury is still out on saturated fat and CVD. Many cardiologists say it's linked to sugar/ inflammation in the body not saturated fat- the French paradox- lots of butter, fat etc, but low incidence of heart disease.

It's often what the saturated fat is in that's the issue- cakes, biscuits, pastry, or red meat eaten with fries etc.

No one just eats butter out of the tub.