To think it's impossible to eat a UPF free diet as an ordinary person?

[MyHealthyMission]

I mean ordinary as in, works full time, earns a decent but not huge wage, has free time but not entire days at a time to dedicate to cooking etc.

I'm on a bit of a health kick, and have turned my attention to eating whole foods and ensuring I'm eating as healthy as possible as we come into winter.

I've had a sourdough starter on the go for a while and decided I'd knock up some bread rolls and soup to have for lunch in the coming week because it's turned cold. Figured it would be a great, low UPF meal. Until I googled the beef stock, which is apparently a really bad UPF! Even the super expensive all natural concentrates are UPF. So unless you can afford to buy and boil a load of beef bones, it seems you're out of luck.

Obviously you can do the normal things like avoiding crisps, protein shakes etc. as they're all full of UPF, but when even things like stock cubes are stuffed full of them, it just seems impossible! AIBU to think it's just become impossible to eat a UPF free diet?

You're choosing really complicated time consuming things to make. Swap bread for couscous or homemade flat bread. Swap jam for hummus or honey. Swap pie for casserole. If you want eat like a 50s housewife, you either need to be a housewife or buy ready made

You don’t need to be a housewife to eat home made. Make Sundays a day of cooking. We’ll have a roast chicken then boil up the carcass for several pots of stock to put in the freezer, make a big pot of pesto (it lasts about 3 weeks in the fridge). Make 20 Yorkshire puds and freeze them. Buy a breadmaker, prep it before bed and wake up to fresh warm bread. Make a heap of flatbreads and freeze them for things like a curry and chilli con carne. I work full time with 2 kids and 2 dogs and still have time to eat mostly home made. Frozen mash is one thing I cheat on but it’s potato, butter and milk so not UPF. It’s taken me a couple of years to get into a rhythm of finding decent cheats and routines but you definitely do not have to be a housewife to avoid ready made!

@JTtheee I have often spent time on a Sunday morning doing meal prep/batch cooking. Once you get into the swing of things it doesn’t take too long to do and saves time further down the line, so IMO has been worth giving up a Sunday morning especially in winter when we were less likely to be doing anything much. I am more likely to make soups, and main meals such as chilli, curry, casseroles, stew type meals along with sauces.

My DD approaches things slightly differently and uses a slow cooker (less so in summer). She makes more than is needed for the evening meal and either freezes leftovers or uses them for lunches.

With a little thought and organisation, we both manage to cook from scratch and avoid ready made/UPF.

But if you work full time, when are you actually getting time to spend with friends and family if one a day a weekend is spent entirely devoted to cooking?

I love cooking and do my best to eat healthy but I think some people are so focused and obsessed with this UPF idea that it's at the exclusion of everything else. Good health isn't about nutrition alone, socialising, spending time together , good mental health are all equally important.

I work full time so my time is limited. I cook homemade as much as I can but I'll use the occasional ready meals and eat supermarket bread and stock cubes and array of other products guilt free.

I'd rather use these products than spend a whole day boiling up bones for stock, endlessly batch cooking and making bread when I could be seeing friends, spending time with my children and family and actually out the house in fresh air having experiences and fresh air.

I'm pretty certain when my children grow up, they aren't going to give a shit where their bread came from or whether I used a stock cube or not but they'll be but that my time was spent with them giving them happy memories and fun times seeing friends and family.

Why can’t cooking be a family fun thing? We make it family time. It’s wonderful.

It probably is impossible as we've come to rely on items such as stock or ketchup where it's generally impractical to make it all from scratch. However I don't think we need to be concerned about small amounts in our diet. Using upf stock shouldn't mean you can't have a bag of crisps. The issue that we have is that for the average person upfs make up 60% of their diet. So I don't think proportions of 10-20% are anything to worry about.

But you don’t need to spend a day making stuff. Just cook meals with normal, whole ingredients . Last night I made chicken curry with rice. Took me 20 mins to prepare, 20 mins to cook. What’s the big problem? I don’t eat snacks apart from fruit/ cheese/ nuts. I rarely eat bread and if I do it’s a sourdough. I have condiments but I’m not going to freak out about a teaspoon of ketchup or mayo.

I do this anyway. My post was in reference to the entire blocking out of a day a week to spend cooking bread, stock, Yorkshire puddings. That's fine if you want to do that but I'd rather use the shortcuts with the fresh food and spend quality time with my family and get the benefit of fresh air, socialising and activities together then spent chained to my kitchen for an entire day boiling up carcasses and making mountains of bread.

And I have a 3 year old and baby so cooking isn't exactly an enjoyable family experience at the moment! They certainly wouldn't want to be indoors doing it for an entire day!

And the "Big problem" is is that I have a baby (a rather refluxy one) and a 3 year old and simply don't have the luxury or time to be spending 20 minutes preparing and a further 20 minutes cooking each night.

I get annoyed when I see the self righteous and goady posts of people who have the luxury of time and money to be able to do this every day and yet can't understand individual circumstances of why we can't all be making our own bread, stock and god knows what else let alone have the time to be researchin all these products and going to several different supermarkets, butchers, bakeries to purchase these products

I think most people like myself do the best we can. But frankly life is far too short to be worrying about the nutritional components of stock cubes.

YABU, it's not that hard. I guess it depends on the type of food you cook, I don't use stock cubes or sauces or whatnot. But we do eat chocolates etc and those are UPF but I don't cook my own snacks so don't count those.

I said that’s not necessary. Eat real food and cook from scratch. I don’t cook anything that requires hours.

I’ve had two babies and still managed to cook every night. It’s not rocket science. 20 minutes is nothing!

No one said anything about blocking a whole day out cooking. Putting a chicken carcass in a pot with an onion and carrot takes less than 5 minutes. As does the straining. Making bread in a breadmaker takes less than 5 minutes. Making Yorkshire pudding batter for 20 takes on average 2 or 3 minutes longer than making a batter for 6.
batch cooking pasta for lunches takes 15 minutes and lasts 3 days. Eating well does not mean you can’t have friends or family time for goodness sake!