Ultra-Processed People

[Fairislefandango]

Anyone read this? I'm currently listening to it as an audiobook and it's really enlightening, if depressing! After spending years on and off various diets and ending up back where I started, I'm thinking that cutting out UPF is the only sane thing left to try.

Only extra virgin olive oil is not ultra processed. Olive oil is heated and refined.

Yeah but then it’s apparently carcinogenic if you heat it…..🙄

Oooooh. Loving your thread OP, but not sure about that one!

Buy a strange coincidence, I bought some ham from Aldi today, yay! It was Parma, prosciutto de Parma - on special sale £1.99! Just had it on toast - delish 🤤.

The ingredients read : “pork leg, salt”.

Interestingly I attended a Spanish festival earlier in the year. It was really amazing, totally for the locals, and almost no tourists. One thing I did notice was that most Spainish people (at Leary) seemed healthy, good looking and normal sized. The Spanish also famously like their meats, and their cured meats, so it may be that it’s not cured meats per se that is the problem, it’s more the cheap, highly processed supermarket, pinky ham type things that are the issue (and that’s the stuff I just can’t bring myself to eat) and I wonder how the processing and ingredients differ so, to make one delish and other other (to me) inedible.

The Spanish also famously like their meats

This confuses me about 'The Mediterranean Diet'. It's meant to be lots of vegetables, wholegrains, bit of meat/fish/dairy. That's not how they eat.

Sounds very expensive and time consuming to lead a upf-less diet 🤨

If it's really that bad for the nation's health maybe the government should be doing something about it.

There's a lot the government should be doing that they don't do.

Oooooh. Loving your thread OP, but not sure about that one!

Buy a strange coincidence, I bought some ham from Aldi today, yay! It was Parma, prosciutto de Parma - on special sale £1.99! Just had it on toast - delish 🤤.

The ingredients read : “pork leg, salt”.

The majority of ham and other processed meats have nitrates added to them, which is what makes them a cancer risk if you eat them often. I just googled and apparently the Italians basically stopped using nitrates in Parma ham, and some other ham producers are following suit, which is great!

Not as expensive and time consuming as obesity, cancer and cardiovascular disease.

If it's really that bad for the nation's health maybe the government should be doing something about it.

Yes, they definitely should, but that doesn't mean everyone has to wait for the government to make decisions for them. Besides, the food lobbies and big corporations are very powerful. If you knew had been a smoker and aware that smoking caused cancer before the government eventually decided to admit it and put out health warnings, would you have just gone 'Nah - I'll carry on until the government do something about it'?

The med diet is BS. Or, at least what we've been sold as the med diet is anyway.

Nitrates is the key differentiator here. Most meats I've had from Spain, Italy and France have been nitrate free. Very basic in how they're cured or smoked. Contrasted to the UK where everything has nitrates. And as numerous studies show, if you eat meat with high nitrate content, you're more likely to get cancer.

Overall, the UK supermarket offering is poor. Don't even get me started on the quality of fruit and vegetables in this country. Even independent farm shops aren't as good as they could be. It's such a shame.

Why is the med diet BS? It's nothing to do with what is being eaten in Spain right now, it was a study based on eating patterns in the 1940s or around then, and they found people on a simple diet based on veg, pulses, olive oil, fish and limited red meats were living longer and suffering from less chronic disease than anywhere else in the world. It was based on a few med regions at a specific point in time rather than modern cuisine nowadays.

It's nothing to do with what is being eaten in Spain right now, it was a study based on eating patterns in the 1940s or around then

Brilliant. That would explain it. I've wondered this a long time and never found this bit of information. Have you get a reference for the study?

I'm really surprised to hear that a high meat content is new in Mediterranean countries... I thought that it was all 'traditionally' prepared.

I lived in Spain for years, absolutely it’s heavy into meat, meat and more meat. However the amount of vegetables you eat is huge, the basic salad has a big variety of ingredients. There’s olive oil on everything. You have aisles of cans (like old metal PetrolPrices cans) full of olive oil and only a small part in comparison for cakes. I couldn’t name you one Spanish chocolate bar. Crisps? They’re crap and a small range anyway.

Buying two seabass is half the price of a MacDonald meal deal. I couldn’t afford to eat Macdonakds all time even if I wanted to, and I can’t afford to eat loads of fish now. Absolutely mountains of vegetables, delicious recipients like fried green beans and pistachios and almonds…. Etc.

I also noticed who’s there that despite the huge number of smokers you don’t come across cancer nearly as much as here. or fat people.

it is FAR easier to eat well in Spain. The difference is immense.

Sorry, I meant to tag @ReluctantFishLady on this post.

I guess my diet is fairly processed, thinking what I've eaten today

Breakfast
Cottage cheese - ok
Marmite rice cakes - UPF?

Lunch
Bread roll - UPF
Pastrami - processed?
Cheese - ok
Gherkins - processed?
Mayo - UPF
Tortilla chips - processed but not UPF I don't think as only plain ones
Biscuit - UPF
Banana - ok

Tea
Roast chicken, cucumber, tomatoes, spring onion, goats cheese - all ok
Gherkins again! Processed?
Peri sauce - UPF
Ready to eat merchant gourmet grains -processed?

I'm a languages teacher and have often worked with Spanish colleagues. They aren't very complimentary about British food! I also had a Polish friend who said she started putting on weight as soon as she moved to the UK. She said the difference in quality and stodginess of the bread was particularly noticeable.

In the last week I've been making a real effort to reduce my UPF consumption. It's made harder by the fact that my family aren't really interested! I get really hungry around now, after the school day finishes, so I have a pot of nuts in my desk to avoid temptation by unhealthier things!

Today I've eaten:
Breakfast: banana and a few nuts
Lunch: mozzarella salad brought from home and an apple
Snack just now: a few nuts
Dinner will be sausages, jacket potatoes and some kind of veg. Sausages definitely UPF, but dh did the supermarket shop this week...

Ketoqueen that is very very interesting!
I bought the book only a couple weeks ago and I am new to all this.I feel like I am in shock a bit. I really need to get a better routine and easy recipes as cooking from scratch is time consuming.
They say British public about 60% upf and rest of Europe is more like 25%. I find it so easy to believe in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if some people are even more closer to 100 even. I though we ate fairly healthily but all our sauces, stock cubes, yogurts, breads, biscuits etc etc etc are all upf

I listen to audiobooks in 1.5x

@Bubbles254 could you talk a bit about how you have done it?

ALSO which I think is important. Right from when my son was at nursery then school, they were given fruit and yoghurt for breakfast, a proper hot dinner with plenty veg at lunchtime with fruit after. Interestingly my son naturally just eats healthily Even as a teenager.

And there’s not much UPF in comparison.

I think to convince kids to eat lots of fruit and veg it has to be good quality. The problem we have is that often the quality is really bad. The fruit provided at school is an afterthought and the kids just are put off fruit !

The food at my dc's school is sorely lacking in veg. My dd has quite healthy eating habits. My ds has got into doing weights and is very keen on the idea of eating/drinking stuff with added protein, which is pretty much by definition UPF.

Does he know he can get protein adequately from his diet, without anything being supplemented? It's not that hard to eat as much protein as your body can handle without supplements or 'added protein'.

Does he know he can get protein adequately from his diet, without anything being supplemented?

I've told him that, but he's a 15yo boy, and gym bros on YouTube know more than his mother! Fortunately, he's not the one who does the supermarket shop!