Anyone else reduced UPF/cooking more from scratch?

[Upthejunction45]

I used to go a couple of days without eating any veg and barely any fruit.

Diet could be the following: sugary cereal or pastry for breakfast.

Ham and cheese or mayo chicken pre packed sandwich with crisps and cake.

Dinner- processed cheeseburger, oven pizza, chicken nuggets, takeaway etc.

Amazingly I was always a healthy weight I suppose due to portion control and exercise, but my diet was 80-90% UPF. Turning point was biting into a cheap sausage and biting into cartilage/gristle again.

2 months ago I had a face full of spots and now they've all gone. There was a turning point one day and I now bake my own bread, cake, pizza bases, don't buy grated cheese, make my own sauce, much more fruit and veg. Meal plan for the week, it's more faff and time consuming but I've easily halved what I was spending on food. I wouldn't go back now, anyone else?

I cook from scratch every day. I always have done. It’s much easier now I’m retired, but even when I was working full time, I still cooked every night, prepared things for the next day etc. I’ve always meal planned because in all honesty, I can’t shop or cook without it!
Id like to be slimmer but I do love to cook now (which is saying something when I couldn’t boil an egg when I got married 32 years ago!) so I sometimes think my portion control could be better.

I’ve consciously reduced UPF in my family’s diet - all main meals at home are cooked from scratch, but I don’t stop kids having upf at school and we still eat some processed bread (but far less, I buy the expensive fresh stuff now when I can).

I also make “slightly less UPF” trades so a better quality yoghurt and I avoid things with an unnatural shelf life like shop-bought cake.

I don’t find it cheaper since I have switched to some organic produce mainly milk.

I’ve been low UPF since going very low carbs entirely a couple of years ago (I was constantly bloated and uncomfortable and eventually just got so sick of it that I tried it out and it worked) and UPFs just dropped away with that. My Instant Pot was a game-changer - easy prep, quick cook.

But I don’t sweat the small stuff. I have a couple of friends who hand-wring over a stock cube or plant milk or shop-bought peanut butter and honestly, life’s too short. Something’s going to kill me, and it probably isn’t going to be the oat milk in my coffee.

We cook homemade food about 80% of the time now, but I still eat cereal and processed bread. I try to buy bread that's healthier, but it's not always possible as our local shop is just a Tesco. We do bake bread from scratch, too, but I've fallen out of the routine.

The hardest things are kids lunch boxes and how to avoid UPFs there.