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?

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m actually a peasant, and not in any meaningful way rich despite enjoying a lovely 21st c lifestyle, that would be the envy of an 18th c aristocrat.

It’s built on bad foundations - I can travel the world, buy endless amounts of clothes, eat a wide variety of food from around the world, fill my home with furniture and furnishings and labour saving devices.

But if I want to eat organic, unadulterated, locally sourced, seasonal food, and wear clothes that aren’t made by children working in slave conditions and out of fabrics that destroy the environment, suddenly my money doesn’t stretch as far. Time, energy and labour are limited commodities too.

It’s definitely not easy @MyHealthyMission and it’s not fair that convenience comes at such a high price. Particularly when, for most people, it’s not a person choice between working outside the home or devoting hours to cooking; it’s an economic necessity.

I use the Yuka app when I’m shopping so I can pick from the best of a bad lot, and just do my best where I can. Try not to let perfection be the enemy of better.

Procuring and processing food has since the beginning of humanity been one of our biggest and most time consuming challenges.

The harm you are so worried about is caused by commercially driven efforts to make it cheap and easy. Unless the only shop you have access to is a newsagent you don’t have to give in to it.

M & S do some lovely crisps which are just potatoes, oil, and salt, I adore crisps and for me choosing these 99% of the time over a packet of Frazzles (God I love Frazzles) is good enough.

A cube of Oxo is not going to transform the quality of an otherwise healthy, nutritious meal made with natural ingredients into a Pot Noodle.

Some things are not worth being overly pedantic about.

We need to be careful about levels of processing and foods that are nutritious, but before mass-scale food production, food was expensive for a balanced diet and there was a major issue with mal-nutriton. It wasn't all a halcyon era of optimal health, especially in urban areas.

This. I eat mostly homemade food and plenty fruit and vegetables but I have quite frankly better things to be worrying about and spending my time on than worrying about the health implications of one stock cube and boiling up a load of bones and vegetables every time I need to use stock to make grave.

No Ocado deliveries anywhere near us, thanks though.
Maybe Sourdough is an acquired taste, but I honestly find it just unpleasant.

Me! I bake a sourdough weekly. It's the only bread we eat apart from sourdough flatbreads that I also make. We use stock cubes. It doesn't have to be a 100% UPF free diet to be healthy. Ready meals, biscuits, crisps and their ilk are where you need to avoid UPFs.

There's a reason why the phrase "perfection is the art of good" exists.

Not picking on you particularly, but Miso is not a UPF. It's a fermented food - one of the things that are recommended that we eat regularly in preference to UPFs.

To me it just ruins the whole point. May as well eat a tin of Heinz for all the effort, just for it to end up the UPF!

Oh that's good - thanks! I just assumed.

But why on earth would you buy stock cubes? Of course they’re UPF. I make soup a lot and would never use a stock cube. If you haven’t got any leftover chicken bones from a Sunday lunch or whatever, just use a few veg instead to make a veg stock.

OP - you don’t need to eat bread. The idea that homemade sourdough is a health food yet homemade standard loaf is unhealthy is nonsense. The additives and stabilisers are the issue.

we bought a bread maker, it takes less then 5 mins to set it going at night, I have a fresh load the next morning, do that every other day for a standard “sandwich” loaf. Once a week we buy a sourdough loaf from a local baker, but as it’s not mass produced, we pay nearly £7 for that, it’s therefore a weekend treat.

I wouldn’t make my own jam, just buy good quality preserves. Look at the ingredients, it’s mainly sugar and fruit then go for it. The main ingredient in jam is sugar so if you are trying to have a healthier diet, replacing shop bought with home made ain’t going to do much. Try an organic nut butter instead. (If you need to stir it to get the oils back in before spreading, you know it’s a good one).

Thank you to the suggestions on thread for frozen bone broth, will give that a whirl.

Make a different type of soup?

Don't need to, no, but I'd quite like a crusty roll with some soup!

And you recognise that there’s no need to eat it.

Avocados are touted everywhere as being a marvelous thing for health (ignoring the environmental and humanitarian impact of their production for a moment) but I can’t stand the taste or the texture of them, so I don’t eat them.

That’s the thing OP, The enormous proliferation of our species is due to our omnivorous nature. And our thumbs.

I use the occasional stock cube. I don't see them as a huge problem as part of an overall balanced diet.

I find avocados utterly repulsive too.
I promise I do eat some healthy foods though. 🤣

I don't think a single beef stock cube makes freshly made soup into UPF.

If most of the food you eat is unprocessed - oats or natural yoghurt or eggs for breakfast, home made soup and salads for lunch, meat and three veg for dinner, fruit for snacks, that's pretty healthy.

I love crisps, but I only eat ready salted. I really don't think eating some potatoes with oil and salt will lead me to an early grave.

As I'm sure others have said while there is pretty good evidence linking diets that are high in UPF with worse health outcomes, I'm pretty sure it's been shown that this is largely (a) because UPFs tend to have more saturated fat, salt and sugar and (b) because UPFs are generally more palatable and accessible/easy to prepare and eat compared to unprocessed whole food meaning they are easier to consume to excess. That doesn't mean that there's anything inherently harmful in the processing of the foods (I know there's a theory that the stabilisers, emulsifiers and preservatives used in processing may be harmful but I've not seen any credible evidence of this). It also doesn't mean there aren't 'unhealthy' whole/unprocessed foods - if you were to eat half a kilo of butter and sugar it would be just as unhealthy as a packet of delicious factory made biscuits, it's just most people would never sit down to eat the former whereas (MN land aside where we're all stuffed on a single lettuce leaf) most people could put away a packet of biscuits pretty readily. So really it makes complete sense that there are diminishing returns from entirely eliminating UPF from your diet - if you currently do eat quite a lot of it sure, great choice to replace ready meals and takeaways with home cooked meals and hyper palatable biscuits and crisps with fruit, nuts and so on. But if you're already at a level where your diet is 95%+ non UPF I really think your efforts would be much better targeted in other areas such as prioritising fruit and vegetable variety, making sure you have a good protein and fibre intake etc rather than worrying about the occasional stock cube or slice of supermarket bread - and I hate to break it to you, there's no way a homemade soup made with your own stock, home baked sourdough then a bar of chocolate is healthier than a homemade soup with a stock cube, bakery roll and a bowl of fruit and yoghurt or similar - not to say you shouldn't have the chocolate, knock yourself out but don't kid yourself you've somehow 'earned' the chocolate by not having any other UPF that day, it doesn't work that way...

I eat Greek yoghurt with honey and flaxseed for breakfast, or sometimes oats with milk. Lunch can be salad with chopped nuts and either no dressing or a little balsamic, lemon juice or olive oil. Otherwise I have an omelette, or batch cook soups and stews using fresh ingredients. Dinner is meat or fish with steamed vegetables, and sometimes potatoes or rice. The only place I would ever have UPF is a stock cube, and I use Kallo which I think have the least objectional ingredients. But I prefer to make my own stock, and if I'm ever making a stew or something where the broth matters, I'll always make my own. Bones are pretty cheap and it's easy to do, if a bit disgusting. And you do get a lot of stock from just a few bones. You don't even need to add in veg and herbs, just dump them in a pressure cooker with a splash of cider vinegar and some salt. I'm autoimmune so went very extreme cutting out UPFs a few years ago and I've never looked back, real food usually tastes so much better and it doesn't take me any longer. And my condition remains in remission, even though nowadays I do allow myself some treats.

I'm an ordinary person on an ordinary salary.

I have coffee with double cream for breakfast.

For lunch, I have something like chicken and bacon with homemade mayonnaise and salad or tuna with homemade mayonnaise and salad. Tuna is tinned. But it's only tuna and spring water. Or soup.

For dinner, I have fish/meat and veg or salad.

I make soup from scratch and make my own stock/bone broth. I make chilli from scratch with guacamole made from scratch. I buy soured cream. Or spaghetti bolognese, carbonara or curries made from scratch.

I'm not fussed about chocolate or crisps so they're not an issue.

You just do what you can. Mostly upf free is better than not.

I have tried to cut down on upfs this year, but there are several compromises.
I use shop bought mayonnaise, teriyaki, bbq sauce etc I buy wraps and bread.
But I also make lots of meals from scratch.
I had an ED for 7 or 8 years in my teens/early 20s and wasted a lot of my life reading labels. Im OK with not making my own mayo or bread if the rest of what I eating reasonably healthy

Although diet coke is my absolute worst crime!

I don’t find it that hard tbh. I’m not an 100% fanatic but generally we try where possible to eat unprocessed

I don’t make bread. I buy a sour Dough or rye loaf from our local bakery.

I make most other basic breads like naan/ pizza/ scones/ flat bread. All pretty easy

i don’t worry about stock. I buy a dried powder variety from Alnatura which has natural ingredients so it’s good enough for me.