Low ultra processed food meals/snacks ideas

[Cluelessmumcook]

Single mum of a VERY fussy nearly 2 year old. Wanting to cut out as many ultra processed foods as possible due to reading and watching more and more about the negatives. Our diet contains a LOT of them - kids yoghurts, supermarket bread, quick frozen food, even “healthy” kids snacks you can buy seem to have endless ingredients on the packaging, I could go on. Does anyone please have any meal and snack suggestions we can both eat (no meat but DD “eats” fish - sort of as so fussy!). Bonus points if they’re cheap and quick due to tight budget and me working long hours. Thanks all!

Our snacks are:
Boiled eggs.
Bananas/fruit.
Cold porridge (just oats and milk, the boy bloody loves it!)
Oat cakes.

Puddings are normally natural yogurt and frozen fruit/berries. Any fruit yogurt is so high in sugar.

Meal wise we do a lot of fish and potato based meals. Or roast veg, white fish with cous cous or something.
Salmon, new potatoes and salad.
Bean chilli.
Jacket potatoes.

Thank you for all the ideas, that’s great! Do you cook the porridge and let it cool or just oats and milk?

In addition to fruit and veg for snacks we have:
Full fat greek yoghurt with a little honey or maple syrup.
Overnight oats (often just soaking for 2 hours) with nut butter and fruit
Hard boiled eggs
Crustless quiche (you can freeze ones made in individual cake tins)
Homemade granola
Frozen banana "ice cream"

Can I join in for ideas? @CaramelisedLeeks how do you make home made granola? Looking for good recipes.

I made a batch of homemade scotch pancakes with just egg, milk, flour, sugar. It sure it’s super healthy but my plan is to freeze and eat individually when required.

Rora yogurt from sainsburys has pretty basic ingredients although does have sugar.

I invested in a breadmaker to reduce our ultra processed food intake. It means sandwiches, toast etc are now not ultra processed. I can also make the dough for pizza using the breadmaker. It’s all so much easier and less time consuming than I thought it would be.

snacks are:

carrot sticks and hummus
slice of toast and peanut butter
any fruit we happen to have (mainly bananas)!

Meals I often do:

eggs on toast
pizza (homemade using the breadmaker)
Pasta
peas and brocolli are the main vegetables I cook because I keep them frozen so always to hand.

breakfast is always porridge so that at least they start the day with meal that doesn’t include UPFs.

pudding tends to be Greek or natural yoghurt with mixed seeds and sometimes berries if we have any.

Porridge fingers

quickest tired dinner is cheese omelette with cucumber sticks

tonight they had tomato pasta (freezer stash)

any homemade pasta sauce (I grate in any veg from the fridge)
Mac and cheese with peas and sweetcorn

snacks a dollop of Greek yogurt with a smidge of honey
apple slices with peanut butter
banana yogurt ice lollies

@Harping i use this granola recipe (note it’s 7 portions)

mix all dry together and wet together in separate bowls. Pour wet over dry and mix. (I use walnuts as cheaper than pecans )

spread into a baking sheet and bake at 160 for 20 mins

Oh also - ignore the apple sauce. Just grate an apple in. And dedicated coconut too.

Is pasta not processed food?

Thanks qforcucumber

vintagecreampieandcottagepie I think pasta is considered processed but not ultra processed. It’s been around for 100s of years so I don’t think it’s thought of as a baddie although probably are more healthy alternatives but I think pasta is a good compromise for kids

@Harping it is so easy and makes the house smell great if you like cinnamon

Pre heat oven to 150 degrees C
I mix about 400g oats with:
sweet cinnamon (I put quite a lot in but whatever your preference is)
100g nuts (vary depending on what I have but pecans and cashew are lovely)
100g seeds (again whatever you like but I use pumpkin and sunflower quite often)
2 tbsp olive oil
80ml pure maple syrup (home bargains is cheapest I have found)
Honey if you want it a bit sweeter

Cook for about 35 minutes stirring and checking occasionally
Add around 100g dried fruit (I use sultanas because they are cheap plus apricots or dried mango sometimes) and cook for a further 5 mins.
Allow to cool before putting in jar.

Thanks will definitely try these. Love granola!

I'm in exactly the same position as you (by myself with a nearly 2 year old and trying to UPFs out of her diet, also vegetarian haha)

For snacks I've found some oat cakes are really good (need to check the ingredients but you can find some with very simple ingredients), I tend to give them by themselves or with a topping like homemade guacamole or cheese + tomato

Also breadsticks, lots of fresh fruit, homemade hummus and veg sticks, baked porridge oat 'biscuits' , dried apple rings

For meals I've been cooking as much fresh as possible so its not been too hard to cut out the UPFs there

For dinner she's currently very keen on homemade noodle soups, stir frys, curries and her favourite is kimchi rice

Lunch is often something like omelette with added veg, homemade beans on toast (surprisingly easy to make a batch in advance) , homemade hummus with veg sticks or a smaller portion of dinner things

Breakfast is the same everyday as she is obsessed with avocado on toast

Oh and homemade toddler pizza is very popular and easy

It's a wholewheat pitta topped with tomato paste (tomato, red pepper, black pepper and fresh chilli whizzed in thr blender) , then layered with some mozzarella and whatever veg she likes , popped in the oven til slightly crispy at the edges

Obviously leave out the chilli if yours doesn't like spicy food but mine weirdly does

this isn’t probably very healthy but a lot of shortbreads in the shops have only flour, sugar, butter so if you want shop bought biscuits to make things easy I think these are probably better than some

I've actually started thinking about putting some UPF free toddler recipes online as I couldn't find many when I started trying to remove them from her diet 🙃

Broccoli and cheese scones (can't get worked up about cheese being processed, just buy a decent one and it's fine)

Little cake muffins - banana, raspberry etc

Omelette fingers

Peanut butter and apple/oatcakes

Boiled eggs

Homemade crackers

Houmous / peanut butter / homemade chia jam

Yogurt with fruit purée

Baked apples

I'm also trying to make more of our bread, best I've made so far has been a potato and rosemary bread which was amazing

DD likes popcorn (made on stovetop)
cheese
plain yoghurt
fruit
olives (black ones)

Overnight oats is basically cold porridge.

I put 50g of oats, 80g of frozen raspberries and 150ml of almond milk (any milk will work) into a jar, stir and leave in the fridge overnight. In the morning I add a spoonful of peanut butter.

I am also exploring trying to reduce the amount of UPFs my family has. It's such a minefield!

Ripe black cherries crushed into Greek yogurt.
Omelettes.
Fish with couscous (herbs, tomatoes, cucumber, feta etc)
Daal with flatbread.
Socca.

@Ossoduro2 any tips on the bread? We have a bread maker but it always seem to come out so dense and almost brick like!