How much processed food do you eat?

[BellyFlipFlop]

I watched the What Are We Feeding Our Kids programme on BBC and have been following the Why We Eat Too Much threads on here and it's got me thinking about processed food I eat! It's obvious it's terrible for us and I'm convinced it's causing weight gain for people

Have been googling what counts as processed food and cereal bars are on there. We make our own with nuts and seeds and dried fruit (held together with condensed milk!). Is this awful?! Are nuts and seeds even ok? I won't buy shitty full of sweetener yogurts and most stuff we have is fresh but reckon we could do better.

Any top tips on what to eat and what to avoid?

A lot of what I eat is processed in one way or another - including tap water !

Eggs, meat, fish, pulses, are in their natural state even if cut up.

But I think the definition should be over-processed - bread, cheese, wine & beer are all processed but have been part of our diet for millennia.

I read labels on packets, cans etc before I buy. Does ketchup really need added sugar!!!

For dietary reasons we cook mostly from scratch in our house (one can't have gluten, another can't tolerate much onion/garlic), however I was brought up cooking like that anyway so it seems very normal to me.

The only very processed things we have regularly are breakfast cereal, ketchup, bacon, sausages, cheese and the odd pizza here and there and fish fingers and potato waffles for the children.

Otherwise we are very much meat/fish with vegetables and potatoes type people. I even make my own dripping chips if we are having chips.

I'd say though that most people wouldn't bat an eyelid at our weekly menu and think it was particularly unusual.

Monday was fish pie mix in cheesy baked potatoes (basically mini fish pies within a baked potato skin)

Tuesday steak and chips mushrooms and homemade onion rings

Wednesday homemade crispy calamari with salad and aioli (homemade)

Thursday pork chops with new potatoes and veg

Friday leg of lamb with roast potatoes and cauliflower with cheesy leek sauce (homemade)

Saturday shepherds Pie made from leftover lamb

Sunday (tonight) roast chicken thighs and drumsticks, salad and potato salad made from the leftover new potatoes from Thursday

That’s a lot of potatoes for someone called pastabest 😉

Sounds like a good diet! It's just DP and me. Our dietary challenge is that he is vegetarian and can eat like a horse and I eat very small portions so prioritise low calorie/high protein so need meat and fish!

For breakfast I usually have greek yogurt, berries and almond butter. On weekends scrambled eggs on toast. So toast not great, almond butter probably not too bad?!

This week we're doing three veggie Gousto meals: aubergine parmigiana, nasi goreng (rice, eggs, veg), and a halloumi salad. I think with these it's probably any condiments/dressings that are processed.

Tonight it's cheese and maybe a few crackers with tomato, onion, basil, lettuce salad.

Condiments and sauces are definitely where we could improve. And I eat nut based protein snacks. Oh and the nibbly crisp things...!

We'll definitely get a takeaway this week. Fish and chips or pizza or Thai.

I do wish DP ate meat because I'd be happy with steak/fish/chicken and salad/veg every night!

I put paragraphs in there I promise!

I've eliminated veg/nut/seed oil from the house so it's big standard olive oil and butter for cooking, no margarine crap. Good olive oil for drizzling.

To my mind it’s more additives that are the problem rather than processing per se. So bacon is an issue with the preservatives used, but I’m not too bothered about cheeses for eg. I do try to buy food that’s less processed but there are some things I like that are really processed, like baked beans for example. And I doubt I’ll give them up.

Oh and sugarless ketchup is way too sour.