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?

Is sourdough in fact better for you? I think it tastes better but surely it's just a different way of getting yeast to ferment? It's still flour and yeast and salt.

Why ‘should’ it be? It can be, certainly, but some people enjoying taking a lot of time and effort cooking.

Why can’t you have crisps? Choose the ones that are just potatoes and salt. Vegetable soup takes minutes and is cheap and easy if that’s your preference. Roast a chicken and boil the carcass and veg scraps while you’re eating your dinner.

You can make it easier for yourself if that’s your priority. And you can definitely make sourdough in a bread maker.

I dont agree with you at all

But equally I dont agree with this UPF obsession.

You can certainly easily and cheaply avoid anything that you consider/is considered UPF. Its not hard.

You dont really need to though.

You could just buy a sourdough loaf if you prefer it?
I make normal bread in a breadmaker so it just takes a few minutes to put the ingredients in.

I had a Covent Garden soup and Jason's bread rolls for lunch today, shop bought but the ingredients were ok.

We rarely eat UPF at home having slowly replaced stuff over the years. I don't stress over it, if I feel like something totally processed I'll have it (can't get through PMT without a cornetto for some reason!). But I WFH and spend a lot of time cooking. I think the hardest/most expensive thing has been bread. We buy Jason's and it's £££ since the kids go through it like termites.

Hahaha - I can relate. I’ve cleaned up what I eat so much after a cancer diagnosis but I’ll be damned if I’m getting through the first day of my period without a family sized bar of dairy milk.

I try and make sure what I’m eating is really nutrient dense 80% of the time so I don’t need to sweat the other 20!

I just try for good enough. I do think it's really hard to avoid upf all together.

I think the bigger companies and cooperations could be doing more to take on the responsibility rather than it all be on the individual consumer.

Some responsibility ofcourse. But I can get cheaper food that all my children will eat that is all upf versus some food that takes up more time to make and money to store/buy (extra freezer perhaps for batch cooking ) that my children won't eat. it's no wonder its a real struggle.

We grow lots of food (time and space privilege there) that helps balance out the occasional chicken dipper my children have. But with additional needs in the mix as well I have to pick my battles.

Again, who says? ‘Of course it should’ is not an answer.

And again, it can be cheap and easy, just make cheaper, easier choices. Cook vegetables and good quality protein, buy wholegrain bread and pasta or choose not to eat bread and pasta if they upset you.

Buy fermented foods or make your own. Saurkraut is chopped cabbage and salt squashed into a jar and left for two weeks. Kimchi is the same with Korean chilli flakes. An omelette. A bowl of soup made by pouring hot water onto a spoonful of Miso with a handful of broccoli tips and accompanied by brown rice, a seared salmon steak and cherry tomatoes.

An apple and a bowl of natural yoghurt is a cheap and easy breakfast or snack.

If you don’t like the foods I’ve described that’s fine. I don’t know what you like. You certainly can’t suffer food you don’t like or spend time you don’t have making bread you don’t need in the name of ‘healthy eating’.

I love Freya broth, but at £7 a carton its not an everyday ingredient for me!

Because forcing people to eat UPFs which are pretty awful for you, should not be the norm?

It's not an all-or-nothing situation. You're seriously overthinking this.

Its not that difficult if you batch cook from scratch most of the time. I make my own stock in the slow cooker after a roast and like a pp save veg ends etc to add to the stockpot. I chuck a load of veg and stock in the soup maker first thing and then just turn it on 20 minutes before I want lunch and it cooks it all for me. Left overs go in the fridge to microwave the next day.

If I'm doing a roast I'll make extra potatoes and mash and freeze them. Next day will be a risotto or curry using the left over meat. When I want a quick meal I can grab a box of bolognese sauce and a box of mash from the freezer and assemble a cottage pie in 5 minutes.

Just use loads of herbs & spices instead of stock cubes.
Sprinkle oregano &/or smoked paprika on a grilling sausage.
For gravy add basil into a load of frying onions + garlic, when golden pour on hot (from kettle) water when boiling add dessert spoon cornflour dissolved in 2 dspn cold water.

It’s very difficult to make your own versions of UPFs but it’s definitely not impossible to eat a UPF free diet. Just eat whole, natural foods ie oats, spelt, lentils, potatoes, vegetables etc. You don’t need to be making your own sourdough breads and beef stocks to be healthy, that’s just unsustainable and unnecessary

Am I the only one who finds Sourdough bread revolting? And, before anyone comments, yes it is 'proper' Sourdough made by a local baker and not supermarket 'fake' Sourdough. Give me standard wholegrain any day!

You’re not the only one, my dh absolutely refuses to eat sourdough!

My dd eats only whole foods and now we’re used to it, it’s quite easy.
regards to stock, we’ve been blown away by how little the difference is between a stock cube and nothing- well just water.
boiling bones isn’t that hard, she’s got an oxtail stew on the go right now.
will do a chicken after we’ve had a roast etc

Making sourdough is easy though, it’s nearly all waiting. Or am I missing something?

Who is forcing people?

We’re all capable of reading the ingredients of packaging and making a decision on whether or not we want to eat it or not, and if not knowing what something is, looking it up on our phones.

You either make it yourself or pay the bit extra to buy the foods without upfs. There are plenty of options out there.

have you got a recipe please? I know you can make sourfaux which is a sourdough mix with added yeast and there is a method where you switch from cycle to cycle to get the long ferment rise but I'd love a genuine no faff breadmaker sourdough recipe!

I only like it if it has no rye in it. Ocado do a good white one

Bloody sourdough again. I started a thread about this, bloody sick of hearing about the stuff.

Also I dongt use stock cubes, you dont need to

Also food shouldnt really be cheap should it? It takes a lot to grow and cultivate crops and raise livestock.

How cheap and easy was it when we had to hunt our own or wait for it to fatten and grow?

Came here to say this!

Nobody is being forced. Imagine if food wasn’t mass-produced, and contained no preservatives and everyone bought UPF free bread instead. You’d have to visit a bakery every day to buy it because it would go stale after a few hours. It would also cost three times as much because of the labour involved in making it. The alternative is to mass-produce it, but then it must contain preservatives to give it a long shelf life to account for transportation. Or you make it yourself.

Unless you know of some magic science that nobody else has discovered for keeping bread fresh, there’s no alternative.