What it's really like trying to minimise UPFs - expectation v reality

[StiffyByngsDogBartholomew]

I've been trying to minimise UPFs for 6 months or maybe a bit more. We always had a very homemade diet anyway and weren't exactly starting from eating ready meals or jarred sauces.

i used to be a pastry chef, i trained in all areas of the kitchen. Im a really good cook, can make pretty much anything from breads and croissants to jams and fancy sauces. We have a decent food budget of £450 a month for 3 and while I work full time I have a shift which gives me plenty of time at home. I love cooking.

But even given all the above I'm bloody sick to death of it and I've started buying premade food like coleslaw again. I've just got totally exhausted constantly having to think of everything in advance and make everything. Eg if I want to make chicken and mushroom pie I need to make the flaky pastry and to make a gravy or white sauce. Packed lunches and breakfasts are much more difficult or expensive. I've either got to make the bread for the toast myself or pay a small fortune for bakery bread.

Constant arguments over not buying pappy sliced bread and household revolts over not buying flavoured crisps, Pringles, gravy powder, bars of chocolate, cheap ice cream, or cheap squash.

ive tried so hard to make sure everything we were eating was wholesome but its so bloody hard. Even starting from a very low threshold of UPFs and still including some I just can't be bothered.

some examples...
you want avocado on toast for breakfast - got to make the bread or buy it

want a hash brown on your full English - got to have sautés instead or make hash browns that do not taste anything like the same, however good a cook you are

burger and chips for a Saturday night now means you've got to make your own burger buns and chipped potatoes or wedges. Want onion rings with it ? Yeah they won't be a patch on the ones you buy in the freezer section.

no quick dinner options like a pizza from the reduced counter in the supermarket

want a curry ? Make it all from scratch including the naan bread, mango chutney etc

want a bit of something sweet to have after the packed lunch non upf pasta salad that you made homemade honey and mustard mayonnaise dressing for ? Gotta make it yourself.

the only yoghurts you can eat are plain with some fruit added. That's nice to start with but after a while the thought of a black cherry yoghurt was too much to resist

spend hours at the beginning of the month prepping pastries, curry sauce bases, wontons for wonton soup

want a quick pudding ? What are you going to have ? Oh yeah, nothing. you've had to make it beforehand or wait for it to cook. A quick bowl of ice cream or a lolly is out unless you've had to take out a second mortgage to buy it. Or made it yourself.

nothing is quick. It requires either vast amounts of time to make foods to replace takeaways, cake, bread, ice creams etc even if you decide that you can't actually cut the UPFs entirely. And unless your family is 100% on board you will be fighting a losing battle. You seem to spend your entire life thinking about, buying, making and clearing up food.

the takeaway from it is that I will still avoid emulsifiers wherever possible and do my best but I just can't keep fighting this battle to the level I've tried, it's just unsustainable.

Also I think it’s helpful to focus on the things that make up the biggest part of your diet. For us this meant baking all the bread at home and swapping breakfast cereal for porridge. These two changes cut out a large proportion of our UPF in terms of total calories. If you think of something like tomato ketchup, it’s a lot of effort to make and you don’t eat much of it even if you have it every day.

I was briefly worried when I first started reading about UPFs but quite frankly I don't have time to make the necessary changes. These extreme dietary ideals are really only possible for those who are home a lot or who have the money to outsource. When you're working full time outside the home and raising children there really isn't the capacity to manage all the extra food prep.

I think it's good to be aware and try to cut down if there's a manageable alternative but it's not realistic to eat this way unless you have plenty of time and money. Eg, it doesn't take much longer to knock up a quick pasta sauce than to open a jar but it takes considerably more effort to prepare your own bread every couple of days.

Although it's not the same thing, I had a few months on Keto which means you effectively eliminate a lot of processed food.

I think the secret is to not just trying to replace the UPF versions but change your entire approach / menu.

So just cut out bread or adapt to quicker / non leavened version. Also dont eg decide to make chicken pie - you make chicken pie because you've done a roast and already have gravy and chicken... just add soured cream or natural yoghurt rather than faffing with white sauce..

Low / no UPF is either very repetitive / dull / old fashioned (lots of meat and veg, no snacks) or very time consuming and complicated!

We have a few quick and simple upf free meals that we can eat when we don't have time to do things from scratch. Crosta and Mollica pizza bases/pesto pasta/sausage and chips (Piper's Farm do non ufp ones)/Stilton, apple and pecan salad.

The kids love wraps which are easy to make and batch freeze.

You learn the upf free brands. We buy Jason's bread as I don't have time to make fresh bread. Crosta and Mollica make a number of upf free products. And Hunter Gather mayo is good.

It does mean sometimes we will go without the extras with meals eg mango chutney etc sometimes I will batch make but normally I would just rather have the meal without the extra effort.

I don't feel I am missing out as now I know what is in the ufp products I can't enjoy eating them anyway.

Our food bill have increased though and I realise it is a privilege to be able to afford this diet and have the time to bake for the week. I am lucky as all my family are on board and my DH does as much of the extra cooking as I do.

I eat fairly low carb, so don't eat the baked stuff, which definitely helps. Eggs for breakfast. Cheese and salad for lunch with some 85% cocoa chocolate afterwards. Chicken and veg for tea with Greek yogurt and berries to follow.

Not particularly aiming for avoiding UPF tho!

I think the upf stuff is too early in its research to be able to say they’re all equally bad. There is no way for instance that baked beans are as harmful as haribo, or a cake filled with emulsifiers and processed vegetable oils.

I try and avoid things that are obviously devoid of almost any nutrition, and where there are easy swaps I do them - so using plain yoghurt and adding my own fruit is a good example, or baking my own cake when we want cakes, but I’m not going to break my back until further evidence of which ingredients are actually harmful emerge.

I think you will find what you eat evolves over time too - we’ve been on the UPF journey about 2 years - I worry much less now as our normal diet has evolved to be a lot more natural . I have teens who want junk - I let them have it as it’s such a small proportion overall

It’s a very high goal to try and achieve. I’m starting small and just trying to make some cleaner choices. I’ve got as far as baking my own bread, working on own my sourdough starter, and not letting perfect get in the way of better,

I grew up in a upf-free home so I have a pretty clear sense of how it can be achieved, and how much my current lifestyle, time management and convenience expectations are adding to the problem. Our diet was clean, simple and repetitive. We had no expectations that hash browns and onion rings (to use your examples) were anything but a rare treat.

I use the yuki app to scan the barcodes and make decisions. It gives a quick score, but also information on additives, nutritional content, sodium etc, with more detail on specific health concerns if you click through it. I’ve found that very helpful to work out where to concentrate my efforts. (Hence my bread baking drive)

I was going to say this! We have a bread
maker and make a loaf most nights. I guess it might not be as good as you could manage yourself (undoubtedly better than I could manage though) but it takes about 2 mins so it’s a winner in my view

• I wouldn't even consider a frozen hash brown a UPF actually if you go with the Zoe definition of something that has more than one ingredient you wouldn't have in your kitchen. Here is the ingredients for a Mcain Hash brown -
• Potatoes (90%),
• Vegetable Oils (Rapeseed, Sunflower) - in varying proportions,
• Dehydrated Potatoes,
• Salt,
• Yeast Extract,
• Spices,
• Onion Powder

The only thing you wouldn't typically have is dehydrated potatoes, and even that it's obvious what it is.

We are trying to cut down on UPFS but I don’t take is a seriously as you op. My dh will have a spoon full of store bought mango chutney with my home made curry and I’ve never even thought about it.
We probably do about 80%, by simplifying meals massively (eg pork chops and steamed veg) and I’m happy with that.

I don't know anyone who makes their own chutney in this day and age except my mum, and she's 80, so has all the time.

I agree with you except for the last paragraph. I don't think my diet is old-fashioned or time consuming/complicated most of the time! It has taken a while to find easy recipes that are also super delicious though.

Reading these threads is always interesting. It highlights to me, that I actually had a very good diet growing up. Simple, yes, but DM was Italian so always fresh. Cucina povera. Lots of pasta, olive oil (we imported it by smuggling in it the car!), garlic, fresh veg and salads. But also lots of fish, chicken, meat, with vegetables or salad. Not much bread tbh. She lived with my DGM for the first few years when she came over from Italy, so then was taught basic English food, but then also pretty good, because they were farmers, so again, plain, good quality.

I still eat quite like that now.

I grew up entirely UPF free. Didnt eat anything out of a tin or packet until my 30s.

I think where you (and lots of people) get hung up is trying to make some non-UPF version of the same old (not very wholesome) thing you’ve always eaten.

You don’t need to be making burger buns or homemade onion rings. Buy high quality beef and make your own burgers, buy a decent burger bun from the shop or have your burger open face on a roasted field mushroom, homemade wedges or sweet potato chips cooked in the oven are easy and take no more time than cooking frozen wedges, have a salad with loads of variety instead of the onion rings.

Avocado on toast - easy, buy rye bread (the normal stuff I get from Tesco has 5 ingredients none of them UPFs), avocado on top, I have it with chopped up fresh fruit from the fruit bowl and any roasted veg I have, I roasted a crown prince squash last Sunday and it’s fed me through breakfasts, lunches and dinners all week (and just made a roasted veg soup with the last of it yesterday). Avocado on rye toast with roasted squash and fruit salad is a very non-UPF meal.

You can totally eat non-UPF most of the time with substitutions for minimal UPF foods for convenience sake, but you do have to let go of the concept of there being a non-UPF dupe for all the usual junk food.

Positive change in habits is more likely to stick if it actually works with your life though. You want a burger with onion rings. Have it! And then continue to eat healthy natural whole foods with lots of protein, veg and fruit.

As someone wise said up thread...just because it's made in a factory it's not automatically UPF.

The hardcore upf people refuse fish because it's full of micro plastics and heavy metals. It really depends on how far you take it.

I make really simple hash browns by grating potatoes and onion and mixing with an egg and seasoning. I par bake a big batch and freeze. DD is a hash brown connoisseur and likes mine best.

Also re cherry yoghurt, I simmer a batch of cherries and portion out and freeze then defrost and add to Greek yoghurt. It tastes better than the upf version.

But I'm not baking bread and making pastries like you - we just don't eat them often at all and really simplify what we eat most days.

It sounds like you're going an amazing job though and cooking so much from scratch. Maybe you just let the odd upf food go. We try to eat 80-90% organic, upf free, home cooked but don't stress about that 10-20% that might not be so great for us.

It really isn’t, but you need a bread maker

I also love food and love cooking and want to reduce the UPF my family eats. But I'm doing it bit by bit. For example I've swapped my four-pack of yoghurt for greek yoghurt with a mix of nuts/seeds/dried fruit for breakfast.

Lunch today was roast beef, lots of veg, and homemade sticky toffee pudding with creme fraiche. If I were at work, it might well be an M&S tuna sandwich and a bag of crisps.

Supper tonight was the leftovers of my son's frozen pizza. I still think today has been a pretty good day in terms of eating wholesome, home-cooked stuff.

If you sweat the small stuff you'll throw in the towel. No point aiming for perfection - just try to do better, and that is good.

F

I was just about to link to that. Picard stuff is wonderful.
We have the goats cheese and spinach pastries. There isn’t a single thing on the ingredients list that I wouldn’t include myself.

www.ocado.com/products/picard-goats-cheese-spinach-pastries-366290011

I've reduced the UPF I eat. The kids and DH are fighting me over the crisps, biscuits and they love hot dogs, nuggets and pot noodles.

I have a bread maker, I make wholemeal barms and freeze them to have 1 a day. I have made ice cream from scratch but had to stop as it was far too delicious and I was piling on weight.
I now try to stick to simple whole foods meals. I'm feeling much better for it. Eg:
B: porridge/ scrambled eggs.
L: Homemade soup and barm, fruit.
D: Chicken/ pork or fish with veg, yogurt.

We ate completely non-UPF as children, my mum was a stay at home parent til I went to secondary, and baked her own bread, made her own yoghurt and all biscuits and cakes.

I'd like to report that this then carried on into my own cooking and eating practices later in life, but I used to eat two chocolate bars at school instead of my dinner with my dinner money.

I look back now and see what an amazing job she did, but at the time, all that solid brick-like wholemeal bread seemed a bit much, now I'd love it.

The days of staying home and picking your own fruit and making your own preserves, which my granny did, are probably over for most people. I think aiming for 80% would be just fine and avoids the 'forbidden fruit' aspect.