I’ve gone non UPF, I just can’t believe the difference it’s made in a week

[LaurieFairyCake]

I feel like such an idiot. I can’t believe how well I feel, how much I’m ready for bed and how much better I sleep.

this shit is radical. I was eating 40% upf (a teenagers diet is 80% 😱) and I feel brand new.

i have zero pain in my joints, during the day loads of good energy

does anyone else do this ?

Upthread I mentioned that we use Delia's quick mayonnaise method, which uses a whole egg, and a blender.

Yes I did this and the difference is undeniable. I felt like a new person all my bloating and stomach issues went too!

If your diets good, why take (unnecessary) supplements?

I don't buy ready meals but do use a little convenience things here and there, such as fresh meat or fish already marinaded/coated or sachets of lentils. I've lost my cooking mojo a bit recently but the microwave/air fryer is a godsend and generally DH and DDs are happy to have simple stuff chucked in the air fryer or a roasting tin. So we eat a lot of simple air fryer meat/fish potatoes and veg meals but they are pretty wholesome, tasty and quick.

So, basically, you're agreeing with me.

You've just used more words to say the same thing.

BTW I didn't mention oats.

And the poster having smoothies does say she finds it hard to ring the changes, so may in fact be eating like she describes for years.

On being overweight and diabetic- one of the slimmest women I know was diagnosed with diabetes in her late 70s. She was 5 ft tall and weighed 8st.

We cut down UPFs last year after I watched the Chris Van Tulleken programme where they analysed the effects of UPFs on his brain and the read Ultra Processed People. I think he's a good egg and his advice is sensible.

It is really, really hard to go totally UPF free if you ever want to eat outside the house but we aim for 80% UPF free and noticed a big improvement. Particularly with digestion. If I eat a McDonald's, which I still do sometimes then I really notice how bloated and uncomfortable I am afterwards.

We made simple swaps for our biggest UPF culprits and it's genuinely been easy. People saying "crisps and chocolates are still UPF" well, not necessarily. It depends entirely on the ingredients. I think a lot of people get confused between processed and ultra processed food. It's worth reading up on if you're interested in finding out more. It isn't that it is health food
Nobody is saying that Haagen Daaz vanilla ice cream (which is UPF free) is healthy, but it's a better option for a treat than a McFlurry.

Some examples of easy supermarket swaps we've done are:

Bread - Jason's sourdough. They now have various sliced loaves as well as rolls available in a lot of supermarkets. Crosta and Mollica do packets of wraps that are also UPF free. I occasionally make my own loaves but realistically needed an easy swap that I can just sling in the shopping trolley most weeks.

Cereal - there are a couple of brands of granola and muesli (e.g Bio and Me) that are UPF free which I'll buy sometimes but they're expensive. I've swapped the kids to Shredded Wheat which is 100% wheat or they'll have a slice of the Jason's toast with peanut butter instead (Pip & Nut is our favourite which is just nuts.)

Yoghurt is an easy one, just buy plain greek yoghurt and have it with fruit.

Crisps - there are brands out there that are just potatoes, oil and salt. Lidl do a white packet of ready salted crisps that are our go to.

Ham - swap cheap sliced ham for parma or serrano that is just pork and salt.

Cheaper cream cheese is normally UPF free whereas Philadelphia etc isn't.

Proper block butter instead of spreads.

I tend to just make my own pasta sauces with olive oil, garlic, chilli flakes, tomatoes etc but Heinz do a range of jars that are UPF free so that with a bag of dried pasta and some frozen veg would be a really easy store cupboard meal.

Kikkoman soy sauce is UPF free for making stir fries.

I agree that dinners are easy if you aim to cook from scratch using whole ingredients.

I don't aim for perfection, just improvement. Particularly with the food that DDs are eating as some of the statistics around UPF consumption in children are shocking but then looking at the majority of packed lunches children at school have it's not so surprising.

I can't answer for the OP, but even with a good diet you don't always get all the nutrients we need. I always struggle slightly with iron, in spite of consuming mostly iron-rich food, and take Ferroglobin, and have recently at menopause started to take collagen.

And as I've been eating less and losing weight recently, again it can be hard to balance nutrition and a bit of help is required.

I have eaten a very healthy and wholesome diet for decades. Then my DH died and it was an incredibly stressful time and I gained weight then. I was exhausted and fell off the healthy eating wagon. However, it's been a few years since then and I'm now well into perimenopause (which may contribute) and even having gone back to eating well, the weight seems quite happy where it is. (And I've never used artificial sweeteners, ever).

Jessie I has no qualifications to talk about this, which I think is pretty worrying. She’s also received a lot of criticism from established professionals about the lack of scientific evidence and oversimplification of the claims she is making.

I see her more as an influencer than anything else, as she’s a very good salesperson - selling her books and, more recently, products, some of whom reportedly have little to no benefits.

I didnt say you mentioned oats, Im talking generally and of course there are outliers, the slim person who develops insulin resistance is the granny who lived to 150 and smoked 100 a day....

The point is, on these threads people come out with extremism. You talked of 'glucose spikes' as if they are a 'bad thing'. They might be for some people at some points, but to eat anything carby/sugary is not necessarily a problem, blanket statements are not helpful.

We have increases in our blood sugar readings after eating, and that is normal, it goes higher depending on our 'normal' and dependent on what we eat

Was advised to help with my medical issue by someone who's been through similar- thought I had nothing to lose honestly and I'm glad I took the advice

Also, I think soupyspoon is not considering the reality of the obesogenic modern food environment, which is that most people are probably eating too much sugar and processed carbs on a regular basis for their whole lives, and likely living on, or just over, the threshold for metabolic syndrome. This is certainly the case for me, despite being raised in a largely cooking-from-scratch, high fibre household.

If I'm not careful to keep my glucose as even as possible (using the Glucose Revolution methods), I do spike, and am at risk of developing T2D.

It's all very well saying "just eat less and loads of plants", but in reality people struggle to do this.

This is just 'clean eating' which has been around decades (and I remember being a real fad around 15 years ago). It's also, actually, what things like Slimming World are based on (if you look at its premise, not the 'how to make a cheesecake from a muller light and some crushed up rice crackers recipes members have created') where the focus is very much on eating lots of fresh foods, cooking from scratch using natural ingredients and limiting overly processed foods (through the dreaded 'syns'). So none of it is new, just new ways of describing it.

Its also interesting reading this thread how many people confuse processed with UPF.
A good reminder as well that 'low calorie' etc options are nearly always full of additives and general rubbish in order to make them still taste 'good' - and so are generally not as healthy as the higher calorie original! (See butter vs spreads..)

Tinned tomatoes are processed, not ultra-processed.
Traditional food processing methods are fine. Its foods made in factories with lots of weird new ingredients that are the problem.

You could make an omelette. I usually use the egg for a cake, the small amount of yolk that's missing doesn't make any difference.
I have no idea if eggs freeze well.

At last some sanity on all this diet stuff. Of course it makes sense to eat healthily, but of course it's not going to give you super powers. What's your 5%, incidentally? Is it something properly UPF or just mildly so?

The Slimming World that flogs Upf chocolate bars at every meeting? Unlimited carbs at meals finished up with a Muller Lite yogurt ( full of sweetener & chemicals). Use fry lite instead of oil?
It's literally the very worst diet imaginable. Everyone who lost weight this way put more on again. It's a perfect recipe for everlasting customers.
I blame these slimming diets for my weight gain as I followed them whole heartedly when I was younger.
Now I'm perfectly happy to eat butter, olive oil & full fat greek yogurt. Low fat cereal with low fat milk is the very worst possible diet for me.

What's meant by cooking from scratch? I use stock cubes. Does this count? I use dried pasta, rather than making my own pasta. I use tinned tomatoes, anchovies and tuna, not fresh?

I am considering it, that is exactly what Im referring to! I said exactly that people who are at risk are eating too much refined carbs on a regular basis.

When I refer to people, including me, to eat less and more plants within that, Im talking about lowering the extremist narrative that one cant touch a home made fruit smoothie or bowl of porridge for fear of obesity or diabetes.

Generally speaking, eat more plant matter and dont eat quite as much highly processed foods as manufacturers and supermarkets want you to, and generally speaking you'll be ok. I know every bloody sentence needs a caveat but generally speaking this is true.

We know this because in other countries who havent historically had our obesity issues (although are now catching up), a huge amount of their intake comes from bread and pasta. The reason they are catching up is because of higher processed foods being peddled there as well.

I stopped sugary fizzy pop last week and have defo noticed a difference. The cravings for food are just not there anymore. I think the rest of my diet in terms of what I cook and consume is pretty good but my o my naughty in life pop has to go. Been here several times though and lapse…. New mantra now don’t just have one as a treat as it won’t be just one.

I would be interested to know if you’ve noticed a change in your appetite. I cut out three majority of UPF a while ago and noticed I was far less hungry between meals. If I start eating them again I really notice a massive increase in my hunger. I just want to eat more and more (UPF)

Absolutely no question that it’s better for you, but it doesn’t guarantee you amazing skin, weight loss or lack of bloating.

I eat very little in terms of UPF (most days none at all, probably overall 10% of my average diet absolutely maximum). I have menopause belly, menopause weight gain and my skin flares up hormonally. My sleep is AWFUL, I can’t remember the last time I slept through the night.

It isn’t a magic bullet. Mine isn’t so much a health choice - more due to my allergies and needing to cook everything from scratch. We have loads of veggies and fruit, good quality meat etc, and I still have the above symptoms.

Absolutely no question that it’s better for you, but it doesn’t guarantee you amazing skin, weight loss or lack of bloating.

I eat very little in terms of UPF (most days none at all, probably overall 10% of my average diet absolutely maximum). I have menopause belly, menopause weight gain and my skin flares up hormonally. My sleep is AWFUL, I can’t remember the last time I slept through the night.

It isn’t a magic bullet. Mine isn’t so much a health choice - more due to my allergies and needing to cook everything from scratch. We have loads of veggies and fruit, good quality meat etc, and I still have the above symptoms.

Well done to you on stopping poisoning yourself.

No, as I said, the premise of it is the focus on eating fresh fruit/veg, meat etc (which are 'free' foods). But as we see here, people are desperate to keep eating the same foods they always have and will do anything to find 'healthy' alternatives, including it seems making donuts from bagels dipped in sweetener and using Muller Lite to make just about everything.
(I'm not bigging up Slimming World btw - I've never been to a meeting and have no idea what they do or don't flog at them - but I have loosely followed the basis of the diet in the past, which is, as I say, designed to encourage people to eat more fresh food and less processed stuff.)

I'm merely pointing out that the whole 'UPF is bad' thing isn't new, and is the basis of most 'diets'.