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?

In terms of weight I think portion size is the main factor. I watched on YouTube recently a cooking video from the 1970s. They made an omelette and used six eggs and said how should cut it into quarters and everyone gets a quarter with some salad. If I served up a quarter of an omelette to my DH and DC, they'd be up in arms!

Its probably one of the largest contributors combined with a new narrative (not sure where it came from) that constant snacking is what people should to do 'regulate their blood sugars' and what that caused is people eating constantly and panicking when hungry. There is an insistence that its not good to feel hunger. You see it with children, people insisting that children have to eat all the live long day. This isnt necessary

We also eat on the go, we also eat too big size portions. We also gave up smoking as a nation, by and large. We are not an active society any more compared to years ago when a larger proportion of the population had manual labour jobs, we dont have a huge amount of industry anymore

We are essentially becoming like labradors that are never walked. Always on the look out for food, eating without thought, not getting exercise.

I find this argument incredibly obtuse and stupid and I’m very tired of explaining this on MN (as are others who actually understand the way metabolism works).

Literally can’t be bothered. Work it out for yourself, or continue thinking you can get and stay slim by calorie counting and see what happens :)

This absolutely sums it up.

I never gave my children snacks. Other mums couldn’t leave the house without a bloody fruit winder and a packet of fake lentil puffs “in case they get tired and hungry”.

Why be so rude?

All I have done is précis what the study did and showed.

You may have evidence to support your argument, but this study is not it, and to refer to it as though it is, is disingenuous.

I am slim, and always have been slim. If I eat less, I get skinny. So your jibe is meaningless.

I've lost weight purely by calorie counting whilst still eating all kinds of stuff (bread, chocolate, ready meals) and drinking alcohol and diet coke.

I set myself a target based on my activity levels and stuck to it. In 2019 I went from being 65kg to 52kg and kept it off until 2020 when the world stopped. I ate too much, drank too much and didn't really exercise so I went back up to 60kg.

2022 I knuckled down, dropped the calories, upped the exercise and I'm down to 54/55kg. I go up when I don't track my calories because I simply eat too much. When I need to lose I retrack and I start to lose.

I'm not sure I'll ever be 50kg again like I was early 2020 but I'm choosing to eat more now because I need the calories for long distance running. I can no longer survive on 1300 calories anymore which is how I ended up getting to 50kg.

I'm not saying we shouldn't all make better choices, I'm just saying it isn't just UPF that makes people (me) fat.

Are you talking about a whole food keto or low carb diet...I agree with that you don't need to count calories.

But, if your sole focus is no upfs and that's it...then there are plenty of no upf carb heavy things you can eat that will stop you losing weight. I mean home made chips made from just potato and fried in animal fat are no upf but would make me put on weight

Same. I once lost quite a lot of weight and I was eating only UPFs, but mostly only at lunchtime with no breakfast or evening meal. I wouldn't do it again, but it certainly worked at the time.

The phrasing 'a quarter of an omelette' sounds very mean, but I make a frittata using 7 eggs typically, and cut it into quarters. Maybe not wildly different, depending on what's in the omelette.

Yes as a light lunch I might have something like that..but a main meal for my DH and ds, it would not go down well! To be honest perhaps that is how much we should be eating. When you look at what portion sizes are meant to be, it always surprises me how small they are. I sometimes buy those sachets of microwave rice for DH and ds....each sachet is apparently two portions but they eat one each....ds sometimes has two!

We'd have the frittata for dinner with slightly more substantial veg on the side. Admittedly a lighter dinner than some, but it works. We also split the rice pouches between 2 of us (with a good amount of curry/whatever the main is).

They were. I am of the generation who followed the “experts” who sold the lie that fat was the enemy and sugar was fine.

I was marginally overweight when young. My mother suggested I cut down on carbs as that was what they’d always recommended when she was young.

I read up on the topic, which said it was all about counting calories and cutting out fat was best as that had the most calories. It’s still a very prevalent attitude. Most supermarkets are still full of low fat foods, often filled with sugar to make them more palatable.

All I ended up with was excess weight and gall bladder problems as I failed on diet after diet.

The idea that experts never lie is problematic. It’s very difficult as I’d still rather trust science to help me, but finding out which science is good and which is created with an agenda driven by money and not genuinely to find out facts to help people is very difficult.

OK our experiences are different. I am of the same generation, but it was always obvious that high sugar wasn't a good diet. There was also a ton of emphasis at the time on high fibre and whole foods. Low fat is good.

And it wasn't necessarily experts saying sugar was fine. It was diet book writers - a very different demographic. But anyone who went, 'I can't have a fry up but these five bars of chocolate won't harm me' needed their head read.

The idea that experts never lie is problematic.

No, it isn't. They take what is the best evidence at any given time and work from that. I didn't mean they are always 100% correct.

It's so unproblematic that we hardly have any examples of experts lying. Experts being qualified, employed by the right institutions or bodies, etc, not YouTubers or that guy who left academia because they wouldn't take him seriously. Andrew Wakefield lied like a flatfish and that's been a massive, massive problem. I'm sure there are a handful of others. But by and large experts lose their reputations if they lie, which keep them employed.

Many people who go low fat end up losing their gall bladder. It’s a recognised problem.

And the people who demonized fat were scientists paid by the sugar manufacturers. It’s been well documented.

So yes, science is skewed by money and politics. We’re currently living in an era when people are being mutilated and put on hormones for a lifetime because they are suffering from mental health problems. The man who popularized lobotomy was a doctor who won the Nobel Prize. Science does not exist in a vacuum which is why US medicine looks very different to what we get on the NHS in the UK.

Yes I think it’s your portions that are out, not the 70s video. I know, it’s a shock when you actually look at what portions are supposed to be. Like a tin of soup - the calories are always for half a tin. I mean, who eats half a tin of soup?!

Its only when I focus and really weigh and measure everything that I realise just how much my “normal portion” size has crept up!

To back this up, this is well worth reading. It's 9 years old but is about the same guy (Robert Lustig) that is in the podcast I linked to earlier.

The sugar conspiracy | Sugar | The Guardian

So yo-yo dieting then…

So it didn’t work long term then…

Anyone see a pattern emerging?

I don’t think you’re approaching this logically.

Your position is that eating UPF food will result in more weight gain than eating exactly the same number of calories of non-UPF food, I think? And therefore that switching from UPF to non-UPF whilst ingesting exactly the same number of calories will result in weight loss?

Assuming I have that right, then the previous posters’ anecdotes of weight loss by calorie reduction undermine your argument.

The fact that they may be to-yo dieting is irrelevant to your (apparent, thus far unsubstantiated) claim that UPF calories are somehow different in calorific value to non-UPF calories.

I’m not defending junk food, I’m not suggesting yo-yo dieting is good, I am certainly not denying that junk food is “addictive” and easier to over-eat.

I’d still quite like to see a study that backs up your claim, because I haven’t been able to find one.

You can buy tinned soup that has 300mls.

TBH tinned soup has zero nutrition compared to fresh soup or homemade.

Occasionally I buy cartons of fresh soup and they last for at least 2 servings.

Isn't the research the one that Chris Van Tulkeken looked into?

And he followed up the effects of UPF on the brain with researchers at UCH London.

biochemist here who worked in a large international food company. RE UPFS there is peer reviewed published evidence that emulsifiers disrupt the gut bacteria and affect risks of bowel cancer and immunity /allergies

linked in here

https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/what-are-emulsifiers#uses

I don't doubt that upfs are bad for our health....but health and weight whilst being closely linked don't always match up. I've known several very thin people who have absolutely appalling diets... mainly upfs...they just don't eat much.

I don’t know. I can’t find any evidence to support the idea that swapping UPF for non-UPF but still eating the same number of calories will result in weight loss, or vice versa.

Yes, junk food is junk and makes you crave and eat more junk, and emulsifiers and other artificial additives aren’t good for you at all, but calories are just calories, unless anyone can provide evidence to the contrary.