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 ?

You can make hard 'boiled' eggs in an air fryer. You just put them in any oven for around 12-15 minutes.

I also dont agree that ready meals such as those in the thread 'still arent good'

In what way, whats the quantifier of that?

Its put together in a factory but using the same ingredients as someone would use at home.

I cook from scratch, don't eat red meat or any processed or UPF, no sugar, dairy, gluten, caffeine or alcohol.

I eat a huge variety of fruits and vegetables, fish, fermented foods, herbs and spices. I drink water with lemon or lime.

I run 20k a week, I do weight workouts, I do at least 15k steps most days. I log 8-9 hours sleep every night, I do yoga - basically, everything I possibly can to be healthy.

I still suffer with a painful condition (endometriosis) and am always trying to lose a few kilos...

Diet can help but it's not a cure-all.

Ah right, thanks for clarifying.

@Mjmum10 - be careful with the turmeric supplements- they are being strongly linked to liver damage. Somewhere up the thread someone linked to an article on it but I’ve read it elsewhere too.

Problem with ready meals is often salt and sugar content aside from whether they are UPF or not. But it all again comes down to not conflating non-UPF with healthy. If you laden whole foods with sugar and salt that’s clearly not healthy, even though it’s not ultraprocessed. If you eat mainly white pasta and potatoes and no protein or fibre then that’s not healthy either. It’s all pieces of, but not the whole, puzzle.

When you start properly learning about nutrition you kind of follow this path where you start with eliminating UPFs and feel very virtuous and then as you learn further you realise that your diet is not necessarily healthy even though you’ve proudly been talking about how few UPFs you eat.

We have a mainly UPF-free household, yet I eat far healthier than my husband because he loves an over-abundance of starchy white carbs, salt and sugar whereas I favour veg and lean protein and fibre.

We did this about 18 months ago OP, well done. I was so shocked that certain products could be ultra processed while other, seemingly identical products, were not! Soy sauce and coconut milk for example etc… you can get some that are 100% pure and others that are full of additives and preservatives. Took me a while to get the hang of it, reading every single label. I also found that I had to do two shops, one with Tesco and one with Ocado. It keeps costs down to shop with Tesco but they don’t always have the additive free versions of products I need. the only thing I eat that now that is UPF is mayonnaise. I love it and can’t be arsed to make it 🤣

I'll look into this more thank you

Thanks for sharing OP

@R0setheHat - you will have to read the thread - there has been 18 pages of comments since MounjaroMounjaro’s comment last night!

I think there is a lot of confusion about what is UPF. There are always people saying that everything is UPF so there is no point trying, that avoiding it is a fad, etc.

the reality is really quite simple - it’s not things like normal cheese, dried pasta, etc.

It”s things like long life cakes and biscuits, most ready meals, etc.

i am very time poor so i can’t spend hours in the kitchen but i mainly eat a non UPF diet. Not completely but i do my best. I eat a mostly vegetarian diet and rely heavily on things like jars of chickpeas, cans of tomatoes, etc.

bread can be tricky. I am in London so have access to the most amazing bread but I know that some people only have access to processed supermarket bread. I love bread so if I lived somewhere where I could not get decent bread I would probably buy a bread maker.

I follow an Irish woman in Instagram called Sophie Morris and she posts a lot about easy supermarket swaps for less processed versions of things. She is in Ireland so does cover two of the Irish supermarket chains - Dunnes and SuperValu but she also covers things in Tesco, Aldi and Lidl. Possibly M&S too.

There's a lot of mixed messages here.

Cutting out UPFs won't guarantee weight loss. I made a beautiful Victoria sponge yesterday that's entirely UPF free but it's also full of delicious sugary buttery calories. In fact, if you're used to eating artificially sweetened and textured stuff (to reduce its fat and calories), swapping it like for like is likely to make you gain weight.

The issues I see with UPF are that they are designed to make you over consume food, may be fairly lacking in nutrition, take the place of healthier options in your diet and the various effects of different additives are only coming to light, after we've been regularly consuming them for a few decades.

Yes 3 is classed as processed which is not a UPF. The only one that is 4 or UPF that they make (that I know of) is tiger rolls which includes dextrose and as a result I don’t buy them.

But has made a masssive deal over how “little” she eats multiple times.

I agree. I’ve been reducing UPF for a couple of years now, but I’ve always mostly cooked from scratch so assumed we were eating healthy foods. When I became aware of UPF and started checking labels, I was shocked how ‘simple’ everyday ingredients can contain lots of additives. Also, lots of vegetarian/vegan options like quorn are sold as healthy alternatives to meat when in fact they’re UPF. It’s a minefield 😞

Just cut carb out. Nothing else

I'm not on Instagram and wonder why anyone is TBH.

You don't need to 'follow' anyone.

Just use your own common sense (not aimed at you especially @Peridot1 )

Buy raw ingredients, make food=simple.

Most pasta is not UPF - should be just durum wheat semolina. It’s just processed

I agree. Acknowledge that a lot of people are relying on “crap” and encouraging/teaching proper cooked meals with more veggies etc. alongside plenty of exercise that includes good strength training and most people would notice a difference if they weren’t already doing this.

Perhaps she just wants validation and support, which is fine.

I also love mayonnaise and shop at Tesco. I’ve tried and liked the Foraging fox. They also stock hunter and gather and a Polish brand that is UPF free and I’ve heard good things about.

I've pretty much always eaten low UPF, partly because I want to eat 'food' rather than chemicals added to make ingredients run through machines more easily! I am a scientist and I know that food and indeed people are 'chemicals' . Breakfast is savoury ( to keep blood sugar down): eggs and something from greens/mushrooms/toms/ or fish, then citrus fruit and home made bread. Breadmaker means this is easy and can use the delay button so it's ready when I want it. Lunch is home made soup/sandwiches with my own bread and fresh fruit, maybe with live, plain, full fat yoghurt. Dinner is roast veg or a meaty casserole with fresh veg and pasta, rice or potatoes, all natural and not messed about with. If we have ice cream it's a high quality one. Cakes are almost always home made. Never eat 'beige, buffet food', bought biscuits or preserves. If I do end up eating uPF e.g. when staying with someone, it always makes me feel ill. My diet is low, rather than no UPF. I don't think you need to worry about small amounts of UPF and obviously not bout the tiny amount of a chemical added to yeast when bread making, but it's good if your diet can be mostly no UPF

I’ve always cooked most meals from scratch. When I started checking ingredients I was shocked to find that butter ghee can contain flavouring, canned beans have firming agents, coconut milk has stabilisers and emulsifiers, frozen salmon fillets can have preservatives, plain chocolate contains flavouring and soya lecithin etc. UPFs creep into your diet without having to eat ready meals and unhealthy snacks.

You know by reading the packets.

Processed foods and ultra processed foods are two different things.

Yes, UPFs are by definition processed, but not all processed foods contain UPFs. UPFs are the preservatives, additives and flavour enhancers you wouldn't use at home.

As you said - if the ingredients in a processed food are those that you would use in your own kitchen, they are not UPF.