The whole UPF concept is an artificial distinction and very unhelpful

[Interestingnamesuggestion]

I understand that it's healthier to eat foods that are more natural/made with natural ingredients. I have no issue with that.

My issue is that putting so much food that people eat regularly (especially people on lower incomes) into one category and labelling it all as if it were all equally bad just removes all nuance and can make healthy choices feel unachievable to people who have less money or less time to spend in the kitchen.

Literally, cheap sliced wholemeal bread is a UPF in the same category as cheap white sliced bread. Same category as a bag of Quavers or gummy bears.

Wouldn't it be better to have one or two more categories to reflect the benefits of eating food that is higher in fibre (e.g. wholegrains, not that weird stuff they add to "healthy" processed snacks) and lower in fat and sugar? Or food that has some additives but is made with a higher proportion of whole foods?

oh and id do choclate

lidl 90% dark chocolate as a 4 and Cadbury milk chocolate as a full 10

I say all this whilst sat drinking an options hotchoclate

The OP is talking about realistically cutting our UPFs when you are on a low income. You can't buy cheap bread that isn't UPF and the white can be better than the wholemeal. White flour isn't UPF. The food industry has done a right number on families on low income. Then the advice given wasn't applicable, once the Children's centers went. The way to cut UPF is to cook and bake, which would give children skills. We've demonised foods that wasn't a problem.

I now look very cynically at things that I buy and have in my life. One such thing is food. My parents didn't really have access to UPFs and seem to have lived long and healthy lives. A retired nurse I respect and know told me that when she first started out she never saw the illnesses that you do today to this extent. So what is different now? It's mainly the food we eat, the environment, stress and lack of movement.

When did it all start? When did they start putting UPF's in the food? Is it all massive companies that are trying to maximise their profits by using additives and chemicals and are they using sophisticated marketing to get you to buy it? The answer of course is yes. The big food companies don't give a shit about your kid getting bowel cancer in their 20's, just their profits growing year on year. Next year they won't be satisfied with 2026 profits and will be looking at other ways to make more money by doubling down on what's in your breakfast cereal.

The above coupled with an absolute lack of knowledge about food and nutrition (schools need to teach about nutrition IMO) and the loss of passing down cooking skills to the next generation, means that there are a lot of people happy to cluelessly chuck boxes of poison into their shopping trolleys and call it food.

But we aren't just paying for that, though. Those products tend to be more expensively packaged, and marketed in a similar way to luxury goods. What we are actually paying for is the marketed concept that this is 'high end'.

It was incorrect of me to say there is 'no reason' for any price increase, but it needn't be as much of a mark up as it often is. It's designed to appeal to a certain demographic which will pay the extra.

Of course there are unhealthy foods. A lunchable and blue crisps( yes they do exist and I see them in lunchboxes) is not a healthy lunch ever, a cheese sandwich is, ditto processed cakes, biscuits and all sorts of things. You can eat a varied diet and consume vast quantities of some ingredients because they’re in so many things. Cancer rates in the under 50s and groups that don’t normally get it are rising fast and scientists are worried. They are quite rightly looking at the huge amount of UPF we eat. We didn’t quibble nitrates in processed meats until recently but we now know they are carcinogenic. Just eat as naturally as you can. There is no need to eat processed shite.

There’s no good evidence for any of that. UPFs are a passing fad. It will be some other food-related scaremongering nonsense soon enough.

Great post.

If we taught our children about food and nutrition, and taught them to cook then I'd bet that the bottom would fall out of the ready meal and UPF industry. A lot of it is because of lack of knowledge.

I also don't fully agree that eating well is only for well off people. There are cultures all over the world who have created amazing dishes e.g. cucina povera with very little money and resources. I don't believe it is just about money, more a knowledge issue.

If I go into Waitrose and buy kidney beans and tin tomatoes to make a chilli it'll be 4 times the price of what it would cost me in Aldi, but not 4 times the health or taste. You can buy 3 carrots for less than 20p and a bunch off bananas for under a pound. That is less than a chocolate bar.

It’s not a fad, scientists are concerned and have every reason to be given the rising cancer figures in the young. Processed meat is classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the World Health Organization, and added nitrites play a role in this risk. You don’t have to be a genius to work out that the crap pumped into foods to keep companies rich are not there for the good of the consumer. There is no need to consume it so why would you and why would you risk your children’s health?You can eat what you like, we have an abundance of non processed food from all groups to choose from and enjoy.

What’s put into manufactured foods, and how they’re treated (like pasteurised milk, just for example) are for the benefit of consumers. Shelf life and the eradication of toxins and contaminants are massive consumer benefits.

The major trouble we have in the present day is that we forget that food supply and availability itself is the real issue. Famine and scarcity would kill us - as it sadly does to so many elsewhere in the world - but packets of cheese and onion crisps won’t.

This. I don't know why people act like its pseudoscience when the information is out there and even on the WHO website.

I will also be watching with interest on the work being done on epigenetics, diet, environment etc in the coming future.

They really aren’t. Ultra-processed food ingredients—such as artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers, thickeners, azo-dye colorants, and modified oils—are added primarily to serve commercial and manufacturing interests rather than nutritional health. Preservatives and chemical stabilizers allow products to sit in warehouses and on supermarket shelves for months without spoiling, reducing waste and financial loss for brands. Additives, flavor enhancers, and high levels of salt, fat, and sugar are engineered to trigger strong reward pathways in the brain, driving overconsumption and "hedonistic hunger" (eating when not physically hungry). Cheap industrial substitutes—like high-fructose corn syrup, protein isolates, and modified starches—replace expensive whole ingredients to maximise profit margins. Artificial colours and texturisers make mass-produced or degraded items look fresh, vibrant, and appetizing. Studies already link heavy UPF consumption to gut microbiome disruption, chronic inflammation, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases.

Actually, it goes back further than we think. Unscrupulous shopkeepers at least as early as the Victorian era were bulking out flour with crap to make it go further. In the late 19th century, formalin was added to milk to keep it fresh, as well as borax. There didn't used to be a lot of regulation around food.

The fact is that mass food production has been in existence for over a hundred years. It's easy to demonise mass production, but actually for at least a period of time, it vastly increased the health of the masses by fortifying staples for those who had little access to fresh produce. Yes, people made more from scratch, but often out of poor quality, low nutrition ingredients that were badly stored.

Whilst bowel cancers, etc might be on the rise, other diseases caused by nutritional deficiency which were common among the poorer population have all but disappeared. Deaths due to malnutrition in under-sixteens used to be much more commonplace.

Certainly, UPFs are an issue, but the days before mass production did not see a vastly healthier overall population.

It’s the misty-eyed ‘back to the land’ syndrome: that we were somehow better off when we threshed our own wheat and milked our own cows. It’s terrible unscientific, romantic nonsense. It overlooks famine, malnutrition and food-borne disease.

This is all an overspill from ‘60s hippy rubbish and its child, the New Age movement. Very seductive though, granted.

In the pseudo-scientific world, researchers who need to be published or activists at the WHO put out some contentious old tripe about diet and the eager rush to hold it up as the dazzling truth.

Mine is not a "yeast risen" version, but the old way of making buttermilk wholemeal soda bread. It's mostly what I use now. I know it's denser than leavened bread, but I add an egg and some rapeseed oil or melted butter (sacrilege, but WTH!) to make it somewhat softer. I slice thinly and freeze a few slices at a time. It can go stale very quickly otherwise. I admit to having some slices of shop bought wholemeal pan bread for toasting though.

But it's gorgeous just the same with Kerrygold butter when just out of the oven!

Any soda bread recipe will do and adapt it. I add ground flax and chia seeds for example. It doesn't require scientific measurements like a cake would!

Wow so arguing against WHO,a cynic might think you work for Nestle or Unilever.

With WHO it all depends. For example, you won’t find a bigger supporter of WHO vaccination coordination, advice and encouragement than me. Much of what WHO does is laudable.

But there are doubts (and some controversies) around some aspects of WHO’s work and output. Their conclusions on ‘UPFs’ and the like are no better than anyone else’s.

I have no connection to the food or retail industries at all.

I might have to revisit soda bread. I have made it, but to be honest, I didn't really like it. It's easy to make as well.

I think OP was actually questioning whether it's really sensible to tell people they ought to be cutting out cheap wholemeal bread from their diet or whether there are more important health goals to promote than being purist about UPFs.

Supermarkets actually already operate with very low profit margins compared to other businesses.

Even the author of UltraProcessed People has never suggested that all UPFs are bad duh. It’s just an indicator to enable you to use your common sense. It’s just a message along the lines of ‘look at the list of ingredients on the packet and if eg more that three or four of them wouldn’t be found as an ingredient in a normal kitchen cupboard, maybe think twice about buying it’. Not hard.

It’s just about trying to make people reflect a bit more on what they eat. Ice cream is the big one for me. I love it. Now I’m a bit more reflective and try and have smaller portions and not to go back into the freezer for seconds.

I can’t see how it’s helpful to have whole meal bread and Pringles in the same bucket.

But that's the point, it is hard for many to understand. Many people don't know what things like "ascorbic acid" are, so they feel fear when they see it on an ingredients list, but then eagerly take vitamin C supplements when they have a cold.

It is not effective messaging at all.

I still maintain that messaging about adding fresh veg to diets is better than messaging about restrictions. People don't know what to replace things with.

Take sugar for example. The messaging was: coca cola is bad for you because it's high in sugar! Then behold, sales in sugar-free coca cola rockets, with not much health benefit.

Better messaging: "plain water and diluted fruit juice in moderation is good for you, drink more of that." Result being, you are not pushing people towards franken-cola.

See also: cheap sugar cereals are bad for you because of emulsifiers! Pay loads more for organic sugary cereal instead...! Hmm.

Just to illustrate this, already some people on here are talking about eating organic ice cream or organic (sweet) chocolate, because they aren't UPFs.

But actually if you just fill up with lots of veg, high fibre staples, and meat and cheese and tofu and such like, you lose your sweet tooth and you don't tend to crave any ice cream or chocolate.

The key cause of bowel ailments is not this or that bad ingredient, it is the very limited range of sources of fibre in modern diets. We eat so little fibre in our modern diets, and often only from a couple of different foods on repeat. Restricting your diet further is not the answer.

"The key cause of bowel ailments is not this or that bad ingredient, it is the very limited range of sources of fibre in modern diets"

I hope you aren't dismissing all the very high quality studies into paediatric onset IBD that point the finger clearly at certain additives in the modern diet. I don't doubt that a wider range of fibre is supportive of gut health fwiw.