Did anyone watch "What are we feeding our kids?" on BBC1

[MarchXX]

Here's link.

i astounded that there has been little to no research of the effect of UPSs on our brains and bodies. The results on Chris (after one month) were dire indeed.

Chris's brain scans before and after were shocking but not surprising as UPF food manufacturers spend multi££££millions on research to find the perfect bliss point to skewer and keep new addicted consumers eating their products again and again.

I was interested in the huge increase in our consumption of UPF foods since 1980 but would have liked to see the difference from 1970 or 1960 because when I was a child growing up (in 60s) there was virtually no UPF foods in our home, all meals were cooked using fresh meat/fish, eggs, veg and fruit with some dried/tinned goods and no ready meals/takeaways. Eating out (or takeaways) was a very rare treat indeed and snacking between meals was frowned upon and not encouraged.

The representative from the food industry was, not surprisingly, reticent about their role in the deteriorating health of our nation's population. Nestle's success in infiltrating remote communities with their UPF-packed supermarket-boats and creating new addicted consumers (and an obesity epidemic) was an eye-opener but not at all surprising seeing as their role in exploiting breastfeeding mothers in third world countries is well known, too.

Anyway, did anyone watch it. What did you think?

It depends if you choose a big bowl think it looks s bit bare and so open a second pack!😂

@Shinesun14 I bought a breadmaker last week. It is amazing. Just throw the flour etc in and four hours later you have a perfect loaf. Bought it as I'm trying to cut out UPFs. Looked at the ingredient list on our usual Brennan's wholegrain bread and got a shock!

I haven't watched the programme, I can't until tonight, but I read the articles linked here. It says that eating UPFs leads you to eat more of them when you are unrestricted and that's why they're unhealthy. So a calorie controlled diet is a solution to this issue, like it always seems to be. And I have a few questions that I hope might be answered by watching the programme. I wonder who will be the people cooking from scratch each and everyday, I imagine it will be mostly women as usual. Modern conveniences that have helped women get away from the kitchen to pursue things that are fulfilling to them will be demonised and women guilted back in there. And when does my own processing become ultra processed. I see it's mentioned that UPFs may be so appealing because they are often soft and easy to eat, that's why we can easily eat more of them. So, should one also avoid overcooking pasta and mashing potatoes with butter and milk, or steaming bread, or putting honey or sugar on top of my porridge? How do I know that I'm not making my own foods too palatable to resist? Do I just count my calories. While I'm doing that I can do the same with the packaged foods in the supermarket.

I can't say I'm pleased to hear the foods being grouped by how processed they are when really it's about how palatable, easy to eat and calorie dense they are. I would like to stop seeing wave after wave of nutritional advice that just makes broad sweeping lists of good and bad things. That are usually the same good and bad things as before. And I'm definitely not enjoying yet another wave of panic about dreaded chemicals. I would love it if the next health/diet fad actually educated all of us about what each additive does and went in depth about how healthy or unhealthy it is. So that we can make informed choices instead of saying if I can't pronounce it, or if it's not already in my cupboard, or if it's also used in cleaning products I won't have it. I can clean with alcohol, water and vinegar, I can also consume them. Additives are not black and white and it's disheartening to keep seeing them discussed that way.

@Lettuceforlunch

I was surprised they didn’t plug being vegan/veggie as a health alternative. They had milk marked down as healthy but processed cows’ milk, made via hormone stimulation, is hardly healthy!

Isn’t milk just milk? Hormones aren’t used in the U.K. according to the bbc. www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/worrying_about_milk

@Nonmaquillee

Brought up on food cooked entirely from scratch apart from bread. Am doing the same with my DCs. You couldn’t pay me to feed them the processed crap I see in the supermarkets. It’s something I feel very passionately about - good diet can be the foundations for a healthy strong body and ability to live life as fully as possible. Breaks my heart to see overweight kids who can barely run, walking around with a bottle of fizzy junk clutched in their hand and an equally overweight parent struggling to keep up. Must be truly shit.

It’s great you can do that for your family. Do you think that parents deliberately decide eat and to feed their children unhealthy food.

It isn’t an issue of you being paid but how much disposable income for fresh food, time, knowledge and money for cooking (how long is the oven or hob on for?) you have.

Be grateful for what you have - loss of a job, illness or disability could change it.

We can certainly make home made foods more palatable and easier to eat.
It was the basis of convalescent cookery.

Isn't there an animal experiment where they fed one lot the normal feed and the others got the same but blended? The latter group got fatter.

I didn’t watch this but am shocked at nestles antics again.

I’m on a low income so can’t do fancy pants food. The only thing I tend to do is check ingredients. And opt for items with normal ingredients as much as I can. Some bread is an eye opener.

So many interesting points raised on this thread.

I read Why We Eat (Too Much) by Dr Andrew Jenkinson recently, it is in a similar vein to the programme last night. All I can say from reading it is that I have cut out wheat, sugar, veg oil and processed foods from my diet. I have one night a week where I have a grilled meat takeaway. I have cut out bread, cereals, pasta, biscuits. Swapped to butter, lard and olive oil to cook. Mainly butter tbf. I make my own salad dressings and even bought a yoghurt maker. I use honey for sweetner if needed. I eat a lot of fish and veg, some beef and occasionally pork or lamb (lamb is expensive).

I am overhauling the dcs diet after spring bank. I have thoroughly enjoyed the food I have been eating, moreso than before. I am fortunate that I wfh so can knock up a salad at 1pm or scramble some eggs but it's not impossible to live without bread even at lunchtime.

The books lays out all the scientific studies that led to the conclusions regarding our diets regarding our health. It's not just obesity that is an issue.

I have read diet/health books before and been pretty meh about most of them, this one really resonated with me and for anyone interested in the scientific stuff I would definitely recommend.

Blowingagale I think that overall it’s far cheaper to cook from scratch than to buy ready prepared food. Losing a job wouldn’t mean that I would serve up processed food for my children, I don’t actually see the connection between the two situations.

How do you know that I haven’t suffered or don’t suffer from any of the things you mention?

But as you can see, people will insist that shreddies are almost indefensible. Unlike oats. But only if you buy them in a bag. Pots of instant oats are UPF and therefore like poison.

Straw man. Pick something not too bad (oats in a pot) that, as far as I'm aware, nobody's criticised on the thread and accuse people of saying it's like poison in order to make posters look completely unreasonable for saying we should be eating fewer things that have unnecessary long lists of unpronounceable barely-foodlike ingredients. Nobody is saying Shreddies are like poison either. They are saying they're better than a lot of cereals but still not great. Besides which, almost all of us on the thread are saying that we do eat/feed our dc these things. There is nothing whatsoever unreasonable about wanting to improve your diet and reduce UPF.

@bendmeoverbackwards

Are some foods just ‘processed’ rather than ultra processed?

Yes, but it is the Nova group 4 which is the UPF.

Group 1 - Unprocessed or minimally processed foods
Group 2 - Processed culinary ingredients
Group 3 - Processed foods
Group 4 - Ultra-processed food and drink products

It was talked about early on in the programme.

I don't think the programme was saying never eat UPFs. Early on, they showed how the ratio of UPF vs unprocessed in the average diet had changed since the year 1980 - the 1980 ratio was deemed OK - I forget what it was, but it still included some UPF, just significantly less than unprocessed foods, and significantly less than we eat now.

Put simply, there's a correlation between UPF ratio going up, and obesity levels going up. The message was that UPFs should be a minority food in your diet, not a significant or major part of it.

As with any healthy eating plan, it needs to be sustainable and realistic. People should aim to minimise rather than eliminate UPFs altogether.

I don't have DCs so I can't really comment on how realistic it is to stop children eating these foods. Back in my childhood, they simply weren't as prevalent so there wasn't the issue of seeing all your friends eating chicken McNuggets or whatever. Most children were fed on (often fairly dreary) home-cooked food - meat & two veg.

Much of the problem seems to be the ultra-palatable nature of this food - which I fully recognise. Back in 1980, you weren't likely to find your mum's watery beef casserole so more-ish that you'd chow down on three portions of it whether you were hungry or not.

@MuthaFunka61

I've recently changed my diet to include animal fats and full fat dairy. What I've found is that they're much more satisfying than than seed oils and reduced fat products,so much so that I've inadvertently become an intermittent faster.

I'm not advocating intermittent fasting,but this thread has made me wonder if by switching to animal fats food consumption and therefore food bills would automatically reduce.

That exact same thing happened to me @MuthaFunka61 when I did something similar. I only need to eat within a six hour window (usually lunch and dinner) and never need to snack.

Been doing it five years now and spend much less on highly nutritious mostly single ingredients. Offal meats are really inexpensive and I use them regularly. Always make a bone broth with carcasses and add whatever veg is around and some herbs/spices.

The programme said that UPFs are specifically engineered to be overeaten and to stimulate the appetite and the brain to 'feel hunger'. I used to overeat all the time yet could never get full. It was weird and very distressing. With such foods I didn't have an off switch .

Now I don't eat sugars, grains, starches (or anything UPF) everything is calm, and mentally I feel awesome. Even when I have an appetite it is no longer the manic itch that I couldn't scratch, its just normal appetite.

@FishyFriday

The thing is 'processing' is what we do to to food to make it more interesting to eat. I can go to the shops and buy a bunch of unprocessed ingredients but I'll take them home and process them in all sorts of ways to make dinner.

I'll peel and chop potatoes. Then boil them in salted water. Then I'll warm through some milk and butter (both pre-processed in various ways) and mash the potatoes with that in it. I might add some nutmeg and pepper. I might grate some cheese (itself pre-processed).

I might brown some beef mince (pre-processed in the sense it's been minced) in some olive oil. Peel and dice an onion and a couple of carrots. Dice some celery. Throw them in with the mince. Add some dried herbs, some red wine, maybe a stock cube/some fish sauce (some highly processed ingredients there), a tin of tomatoes, maybe a bit of sugar. Cook it all on the hob and then assemble it into a pie with the mash on top. And serve with some (frozen) peas or (topped and tailed) green beans that I've steamed.

I'm doing much of it, but the resulting dinner is most definitely processed in lots of ways. It's not simply the processing that's the issue - it's what you're processing and how much of it is in your diet.

The programme focused on Ultra Processed Foods, not normal cooking/processing of food at home. It also looked at the increase in percentage of UPFs that people, particularly children, are eating. This is exacerbating the huge increase in obesity and metabolic diseases in younger people in particular.

@Turquoisesol

Does anyone know if crisps are upf is the ingredients are just potato sunflower oil and salt ?

afaik one problem is high heat cooking which breaks things down and alters them

We watched it and ‘enjoyed’ it.

We don’t eat a huge amount of UPF, but thats due to two allergies in the home, me being diabetic and us all being vegetarians. We do eat some, we occasionally have quorn ‘chicken’ nuggets etc.

I did have a look at my foodshop order to see what is in there, on the UPF side we had quorn nuggets, oreos, crisps (skips) and dairy free yoghurts. So thats alright, but I’m a good and fairly confident cook, I have the facilties to cook, the time and the money to buy good quality ingredients.

Cooking on a regular basis for a lot of people is just out of the question as the resources just aren’t there.

I do virtually all of our cooking at home, most of it is homemade, but a lot of that is the fact that the things I cook often aren’t available as a quick option, or if they are they don’t taste nice (pataks pastes, I’m looking at you). But I’m aware that this is a luxury that a lot of people just don’t have.

My husband has a disability, this severely limits the use of his hands and lower arms, so cooking most things is simply out of the question for him. If I wasn’t cooking his main options would be ready meals or takeaway. When he lived on his own the only way to eat veg was prechopped, but thats expensive and the range of chopped veg isn’t very big, he couldn’t eat bananas, oranges etc unless someone peeled them. Peeling an egg was out of the question, using a ringpull on a tin etc.

Luckily he has a well paid job and there are a wide variety of very good restaurants here, so he could buy relatively healthy meals, but it was expensive, it wasn’t unusual for his dinner to cost £10-15.

Yes @MarchXX the programme is about UPFs. But what happens is people simplify it down and decide that 'processing' is the problem and 'unprocessed' is inherently best.

The problem is not the processing in itself. It's what is being processed and how. And the marketing that goes along with it. And various societal conditions that contribute to people's diets being made up disproportionately of highly processed industrial food like substances.

I don’t understand how people can be told countless times how bad upf is for their dc and they still say, but tomato sauce from jars tastes so nice. It tastes nice because it’s full of sugar and has been designed in a factory to appeal to certain tastebuds so you want to eat more of it.

[quote PrincessScarlett]@Pinkblueberry I know that shreddies are a better option than sugar puffs or cocoa pops, just surprised they lumped all cereals in as the same and told us to avoid[/quote]
I agree. Cereals have had a bad press recently. Why do people only mention the bad stuff ie sugar and not the good stuff ie whole grains and vitamins?

What the hell do people do on holiday if they eat no UPF at all? We usually have an ice cream a day.

And no dessert in a restaurant ever?

@bendmeoverbackwards I think it’s fine in moderation

I'm assuming something like holidays is ok as its not often.
That said, I've read loads of ice cream recipes and honestly other than blending/freezing don't see much processed in there.

I can't be bothered with all that, I eat food, some is healthier than others but I'm not going to tie myself in knots over it

I also think moderation is key and that was probably the message that the program was trying to convey, but clearly failed to do from the reaction on this thread. If you already have a healthy diet, don’t have health issues and are not overweight then there’s no reason for you to suddenly buy a bread maker and swap the noddles in your stir fry for rice. It’s verging on orthorexia. I can’t believe there are people on here using this program as a way of guilt tripping struggling families about buying a loaf of bread from a shop and giving their children cereal for breakfast

@Nonmaquillee

Blowingagale I think that overall it’s far cheaper to cook from scratch than to buy ready prepared food. Losing a job wouldn’t mean that I would serve up processed food for my children, I don’t actually see the connection between the two situations.

How do you know that I haven’t suffered or don’t suffer from any of the things you mention?

I think I may be coming at this from a particular angle. I have not experienced food or fuel poverty but I have been helping people claim benefits. I rely on quite a lot of processed food partly due to disability. I could probably cook more than I do so part is laziness but some things like chopping are hard or dangerous and pre chopped is expensive even frozen compared to the same amount of onion.

Some low income benefit claimants manage without too many problems. Lots don’t have the energy (physical or mental health can play a part) or time to cook from scratch.

For some people in poor areas it is difficult to buy fresh food locally and some supermarkets still have minimum spend or no free delivery. What is available close is processed. If you have the money to drive or money for public transport that will definitely help. If you are physically able to walk again less of an issue but lots can’t (my referral to illness or disability and time).

www.trustforlondon.org.uk/data/e-food-desert-index/

Universal credit May pay all your rent if you are lucky. You may get up to 70% off council tax. If you are too ill to work or looking for work and 25 or older you will get £411.51 per month to live on. That is due to go down to £324.84 in October.

There is another element £343.63 if you iller and won’t be able to do activities to get better in the 4th month onwards if you have been assessed (backlog). if you have a child over about 4 you get £282.50 under 4 £237.08.

Hats off to you if you are experiencing or have experienced this and manage to cook from fresh regularly/all the time.