To be dismayed at how processed my diet has become

[MyFitMission]

I’ve taken a long hard look at my diet this week and I can’t believe how processed it is. Protein “yoghurts” that are just chemicals, bread that’s just plastic, spreads that sell themselves as butter but they’re mainly just chemicals.

where did we go so wrong with food? It’s so easy to make a load of bread rolls or a loaf of bread, even butter is easy to make. It just makes me so sad

Start with breakfast OP - the easiest meal and the one most likely to be eaten at home, in your control. Porridge oats with stewed fruit, scrambled eggs, Greek yogurt.

yeah doesn’t sound great to me. I’d rather not ingest any "synthetic emulsifier made from the esterification of acetic acid, tartaric acid, glycerol and fatty acids" (ew) or “palm based food additives” (for environmental reasons) when homemade or bakery bread is just flour, water, yeast.

It’s easy to eat non UPFs cheaply. Processed foods are far more expensive. You can buy raw ingredients from any supermarket. Tesco and Asda sell Jason bread which is the only thing I think is hard to produce yourself. That said a couple of slices of bread a day that are non UPFs aren’t going to kill you.

If the majority of your diet is healthy whole foods, lean meat, vegetables, fruit etc then I don't see the issue with some bread and spread.

You just need to look into what your body needs for your weight and lifestyle and purchase that as unprocessed items.

I aim for 170g of protein (chicken, yogurt, salmon etc.), 225g carbs (rice, pulses, potatoes etc. and 75g fat (yogurt, butter, oils etc.) per day plus my 5-a-day fruit and veg, which I cook from scratch.

I don’t buy cakes, but I do make them occasionally (much better than bought) and have given up biscuits and crisps, in an attempt to return to my childhood diet, which my DM based on her experience of managing a diet during the years of rationing during WWII…

@Worralorra i always find that sentences with “just” in them are very rarely “just” anything 😬

I think its hard to eliminate all processed foods but we have made some fundamental changes in our house. I only buy sourdough bread now, cook with olive oil and really look at ingrediants whwn buying food. If thw ingrediant list is long and you cant pronounce the words easily chances are its full of crap.

If you are eating at home avoiding upf is easy enough. What depresses me though is the institutional food in the UK, school and hospitals and limited options if you want to eat out. The food culture is terrible and it is hard to socialise and avoid upfs, most people I know serve them in abundance.

Having cut them out of my diet a couple of years ago they just taste wrong to me know, far too sweet and very artificial. Once of the best things about cutting them out completely is how much better real food tastes.

So stop buying that stuff. I buy sourdough from local bakery and keep in freezer. Or use bread machine and freeze. I eat a slice at a time. Yoghurt only buy natural unflavoured with enzymes. Don’t buy margarine at all either butter or coconut oil.

I also realised this recently OP and have started to make changes. Yesterday I made my own bread and cheese & onion rolls for snacks for kids this week. I’ve started roasting nuts and seeds for snacks, and only buying proper fresh ingredients where I can. It’s an eye opener, and can feel overwhelming but I’m just making positive changes as I go along.

Son’s gone vegan. I treated him to lunch at posh vegan restaurant and I had prawns made from Konjac root. They were amazing and obviously not the worry they might be off you get with prawns
The rest of the food bland or over favoured. He had some fake egg stuff that I wouldn’t classify as food. None of it would have been grown in the uk either.

I eat basic food. Pork chop or chicken in the air fryer and some salad leaves or dark leafy veg. Cheaper and easier than multiple ingredient dishes. I check everything us from British farms too.

You 'just' need to avoid chains and eat from independent places that cook fresh food from scratch. Doesn't need to be expensive either. My favourite places to eat are an Indian street food bar where the entire menu is made from fresh vegetables, pulses, spices, rice and a bit of egg and paneer. They make all their flatbreads from scratch and the only thing they serve that's UPF is the brioche that the vada pav comes in. Also a craft beer and pizza place, again where everything is made from scratch and is cheaper than the likes of Pizza Express.

Starbucks etc serve crap but in most places you can't move for the avo toast cafes that sell fresh unprocessed foods for similar prices.

Sounds like it's time to take control and do something about it. It's Sunday today so (in general) a great day to plan meals for the coming week. Grab a cup of tea, sit down, plan some meals for the week (or the next few days) and write up a shopping list. Make you sure it consists of quality proteins, lots of veg, some fruit, healthy fats and wholegrains. Whole foods basically. If this sounds too much then just meal plan for one meal, eg breakfast, and stick to it for a week before changing your lunch habits and moving on to dinner. When you do go shopping it'll probably be tempting to grab some extras that are not on the list. Don't go there!

This. Even the bloke who wrote Ultra-processed People still eats some UPF. If you can stick to a 100% whole foods diet, great, but if eating your daily protein bar or slice of white toast with butter spreads makes you happy and keeps you on track the rest of the time, that's fine. It's not enough UPF to harm you.

I follow a lot of fitness and nutrition people on social media, mostly in the bodybuilding space, but also some weight loss/general nutrition people, and not a single one of them pushes a 100% whole food diet, 100% of the time. They all aim for 80/20 or 90/10.

I agree @Frequency I think unless you eat all three meals at home every day, cooking from scratch every time, it’s nigh on impossible to be 100% non-UPF. I think aiming for 80/20 or 90/10 and being Mindful of it is the best I can do personally but I’m not fanatical about it.

So only four ingredients to be mindful of? The rest is food and vitamins.

So don’t buy it! Read the ingredients. It’s not difficult.

It takes a while to make bread. You have to mix it, knead it, then let it rise for an hour, then do stuff to it and let it prove again for about 45 minutes, then 20-30 mins to cook. And you need a certain amount of physical ability to knead it etc. it's not surprising someone would rather just travel two minutes to a shop.

Butter though is not processed that much is it? Only margarine and stuff. If it's called butter it has to be just milk and salt doesn't it?

My mate made butter by accident when whipping cream for a pudding once. Interesting but not helpful at the time!

It is difficult, though, especially if you're working full-time or have kids. If you're going from a typical western diet of cereal for breakfast, sarnie and yoghurt for lunch, and something from a jar poured on pasta for dinner to 100% wholefood, 100% of the time to the point where you are baking your own bread and forbidding yourself from eating your favourite yoghurts and sweet snacks, you're going to get stressed, you're going to get overwhelmed and you're going to burn out and eventually you're going to think fuck it, I'm ordering Dominos.

A slice of bread is not going to kill you. It is not poison.

@MyFitMission regarding bread, if you have kids and you are worried about the bread they're eating, tortilla wraps are so much easier to make than bread, but again, some bread is fine. Don't aim for perfection, aim for the best you can manage, even if all that looks like for now is swapping your usual breakfast cereal for porridge oats. It's a start.

www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/tortilla_wraps_70015

Yes, this is processed bread using the Chorleywood processing method. It’s a UPF.

Homemade Bread has the following ingredients
flour, oil, yeast, salt, water and possibly tiny amount of sugar.

I agree with the readiness of poor quality food. We’re by no means rich but we do limit the time spent on the phone and my children don’t have apps like Tik Tok or Instagram.

Also some extra curricular activities like Guides and scouts are fairly inexpensive but do rely on volunteers. Our children do those and dance and music. I agree some of the activities are expensive if people are struggling to make ends meet. That’s where working a hybrid role where possible (where you only have to be in the office part the week) does help. Parents are more around and can take children to activities and be more present.

They add up if you’re eating it for breakfast and lunch. Also things don’t need to be in large quantities to affect your health.

Those additives also completely change the properties of the bread to make it softer and more ‘palatable’ than a real loaf. Additives are also used to make food addictive, which is probably a contributing factor in the obesity crisis.

I think the issue is that we don’t know much about the impact of some of these additives yet, but they were never intended to be eaten and that’s enough to try and avoid them for me.

Yes my reaction about bread also. A family member works in the baking industry and the process of bread making has very strict, health and environmental codes to adhere to.

Only four ingredients in our (UK) McDonald's fries - potatoes, salt, oil, and sometimes dextrose.

One of the main things to remember is that UPFs really harm the liver, hence one of the reasons why so many of us are now being diagnosed with fatty liver.

just google UPF bread