Low UPF diet - to think the experts weren’t lying?

[AusBoundDD]

Nearly 6 months ago I made it my New Year’s resolution to start eating a low UPF diet in hopes of losing some weight for a once in a lifetime trip, alongside just being healthier in general. Honestly it has been life changing! I’ve lost nearly 10kg without really having to think about it - no restricting or anything like that and in general I just feel so much better. UPFs like crisps, ready meals, even basic supermarket bread don’t feel like ‘real’ food anymore and no longer appeal. On the occasion that I do choose to eat something UPF (which for me is no big deal, im not strict!) it just isn’t as enjoyable as it used to be. I’d choose some sourdough over a loaf of Hovis any day when previously I used to hate it! I feel much fuller + satisfied for longer and rarely get the urge to snack.

Obviously it has its downsides - much less convenience food so cooking takes longer (PITA when doing lunch/dinner prep after a long day at work!), ingredients are more expensive so my shopping bill has gone up but all in all it’s a decision I don’t regret. Honestly I think that this way of eating should be the future.

Anyone else feel this way?

If they are just the plain oats with no flavouring, they shouldn’t be UPF. If they are the flavoured ones, they very likely will be.

hahahr.... so, I make my own pastry with butter & WM flour & process the whole apples myself to cook them into puree etc & add a minimum of sugar or maybe no sugar, but that definnitely irrefutably counts as Evil Nasty Horrible UPF? Yeah, right...

A few UPF free meals I love which take less than a minute:

Smoked salmon and avocado with lemon juice on sourdough toast
Tomatoe and motzarella salad with basil and olive oil
Greek salad
Tapas (you just have to be careful to select whole foods like Parma ham or olives)
Cheeseboard with pear, grapes, figs etc

See @GameOfJones post above.

A study fed two groups of people a diet matched in calories, sugar, fat etc but one was UPF and one wasn't. The UPF group gained much more weight.

Depends on how it’s processed.

cold pressed = not UPF
bleached and refined = UPF

It’s the second kind that is in most convenience foods.

And this is why I'm disappointed I've not lost anything since January! Not a pound.

This really isn't true. I cook myself a meal most nights and eat quite a lot - and yet still desire something sweet afterwards. It doesn't matter if I eat a ready meal, or a home cooked meal, I still snack in the evenings.

Yes, those of us who were around many decades ago can all testify that there were overweight people, and they got overweight by eating good wholesome food - just lots of it!

I know a family similar to yours, the mother was an excellent cook and baker and the whole family were very large.

Crosta & mollica wraps are good. All their stuff is food like ingredients!

Could someone please advise me as an alternative to upf bread? I'm wheat intolerant so haven't actually ate it for 20 years but I do buy it for the kids. I know it's bad but I don't know what the alternatives are? Is sourdough from the supermarket bad too? We don't live near a bakers and the kids don't eat it enough to warrant buy it anyway but they do like a slice of bread and butter and sometimes it helps to fill them up. I'd love to have an alternative and they won't eat wraps (maybe a texture thing?) All advice welcome!

I would agree with this. I'm not bothered about sweet things but my OH absolutely goes nuts for chocolate and could eat it by the shed load. We cook all our meals from scratch! I did a DNA test a while back and part of it included traits and mine came back as low tolerance to sweet tastes and high tolerance to bitter tastes (I love all things bitter actually). I think it's in your make up if you crave sweet things.

Interesting- I love chocolate and had quite a bit after dinner tonight after eating fairly healthily with few upfs for the rest of the day.
DH is not all that bothered by chocolate but likes strong and bitter tastes that I can't tolerate (olives, capers, anchovies, mustard etc - although onviously not after dinner!! ) maybe that's a similar trait?
DS still has chocolate from Christmas!

Its a complete myth that if you scratch cook and dont eat UPFs you dont crave more food than you need. Ive got two cakes in the oven, they're not technically for me, although I will be part of those eating it. I will really struggle to resist. I made a dip earlier, that again isnt strictly for me, Ive eaten quite a lot of it already, its irresistible.

Another thing which leads to people getting bigger is simply that people eat more. When I was young I would go to a cafe and there were single sandwiches, with simple fillings - egg, salmon, ham and mustard, cheese and pineapple etc., and slices, muffins, and scones were small. Now the sandwiches come in packs of two, stuffed with fillings, and the slices, muffins and scones are huge. Not everything can be blamed on UPFs.

Absolutely this, portion sizes are mad.

But you'll get shouted at on this site for saying that.

Portion sizes are part of the same beast imo, invariably it's because UPFs are cheaper and can be stored for longer so they can buy in bulk. It's all gross really, people's gluttony is big business and even with WLI (which for the record i think for those who genuinely need them are amazing and life changing so not a criticism of them) lots of people on social media show their what they eat in a day and its processed crap, just less of it. Especially with restricting calories their bodies must be screaming for ample nutrition.

I'm talking about cafes where they bake their own goods - nothing to do with UPFs being cheaper.

I've never been to a cafe that makes fresh food that serves huge portions, aside from a full English i suppose. I've been to plenty of eateries that serve plates of processed crap mind. Fair play to them if they can afford to do so with fresh ingredients at what is presumably a reasonable price if people are buying it.

Do you have a link for the study please?

Really, youve never been to a cafe where they have these mammoth cakes the size of a door step, they're all locally made, a slice is enough to feed about 4 people, jacket potatoes the size of someones head with mountains of filling, of various wonderful types, sandwiches which are huge and often come with chips.

Thats just cafes, restaurants are similar, everything accompanied with large amounts of rice, potatoes, lots of bread etc. Home made. We were in a pub the other day, fresh cooked home made food, Im always looking at what everyone else is having, table opposite had the pie, again a doorstep wedge, the other person had the lemon sole, it was enormous with lots of potatoes, sauce etc. Marvellous but massive. Not complaining at all but its a fact that the portion sizes are no way comparable to what they were many years ago.

No, i live in quite a touristy place though so they probably want to maximise £££s. I can well imagine though as portions i agree are huge most places now.

Oh forget that, I found it. https://dom-pubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dom.15922

It shows that people over-eat on junk food when it’s available.

The participants were provided with >5000 calories of macro-nutrient-equivalent food per day, but they ate as much or as little of it as they wanted.

This does not mean that if you eat 1500 calories of junk/“UPF”you’ll put on more weight than if you eat 1500 of wholefoods.

@NattyTurtle59 i posted a picture of a cooked breakfast my oh made me a few years back. Only comments I got was that it was small and stingey. It wasn’t. It’s just that there wasn’t 3 sausages and 2 hash browns and a Lake of baked beans. I think it was when I was trying to lose weight that I realised how far my judgement of portion size was skewed. The portion size for cheese was the size of the piece I’d cut off and pop in my mouth to even the block up!

I live in a tourist destination, well known for some of the best restaurants and food places in the UK. I often see huge food waste and cant work it out, unsure if the profit therefore is on the drink or something else.

You protest too much. In the history of human cuisine UPFs are extremely recent, and research into their impact even more recent. Do you think it’s just a coincidence that we all got way fatter in the last half century?