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 ?

This is spot on. I had exactly the same realisation. I couldn’t believe that a ‘cooked from scratch’ dinner could actually contain so many hidden nasties. We had to switch a lot of products, but there is usually a not UPF alternative.

Well it’s not always that obvious to people @HerLivingontheHill. And I for one like certain things abut Instagram. I have found some of the posts about easy swaps to be helpful. So you certainly can use your own common sense but I find it helpful that I don’t have to read all the labels. For instance if I was shopping in Aldi with kids in tow and a bit frazzled and they wanted ice lollies I would find it useful to know that the Aldi orange ice lollies are a better choice as they have a lot less crap in them than other brands. Which was a post that she did. I think that would make my life a bit easier.

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I agree with this.

Not eating UPF's is NOT a diet. Swapping sourdough for regular sliced bread and cooking meals from scratch will is not a 'plan' weight loss.

Fat loss can ONLY come from calories in being lower than calories out.

That said, I'm just over 40lb down since the switch, and it kind of IS about the switch, but also not at the same time.

If your UPF habits are particularly bad, then cutting them can cause weight loss. When you cut out snacking on biscuits, crisps, chocolate etc every afternoon, for whatever reason, you're cutting calories.

Also, by avoiding UPFs, you remove some of the cravings for it over time. One of the most pernicious elements of UPFs is the millions companies spend trying to find the perfect mixture of chemicals that will excite your mouth and brain so much that you will want THAT product again and again in the future. They are trying to make life long customers by making their product the only one that 'hits the spot' for you.

It's incredibly freeing to both know this and to feel these cravings reduce over time.

Yes, as I said earlier, some days I just want Monster Munch or a Pot Noodle, but 99 of the time I can look at the craving and recognise that I want those things because I'm tired or sad or stressed and I've attached the way they've made me 'feel better' (with CHEMICALS) to my emotions, AND most of the time, when I do have them, they are in no way as nice as I remember them.

I dont think Ive ever had any of those products with those ingredients in

My coconut milk is always coconut and water, you do need to check how much coconut you're getting for your money though, some of them are virtually half water

Coconut milk is one of the Items that the UPF community is always moaning about.

Read the tins of a few in supermarkets while shopping - many include UPFs. I can tell you that Aldi, Asda & Tesco home brands do, for sure.

Sounds like you got lucky with yours.

I tend to stick to Biona for exactly this reason.

So don’t eat vegetables? That’s odd advice to give.

Oh, well I do use biona. It wasnt actually the reason but I do scour the labels because I want my moneys worth and its 80% coconut, I havent found any of the others to be that high so thats why I use that one.
There are others without any additives, but they're not as high coconut, they're normally in the world food sections.

Ive never seen froze salmon with preservatives, never seen ghee with flavouring, its just butter. Same with my beans, they're just the beans and water

Nevertheless, even if a can of beans or a bit of coconut milk has a little extra something it really cant contribute hugely to poor health.

What on earth is the pasta you are eating with all this in? Pasta is processed but not upf - it’s single ingredient!

I agree completely.

To use your cake analogy, I could make a cake with butter, sugar, eggs, flour etc. and it wouldn’t be particularly healthy. But, aside from the argument that things like cakes should be occasional treats rather than a staple part of our diets via “constant treat” culture, I don’t think I’d be able to eat much of this sort of cake before I felt full and/or rather sick. Nothing in there is ultra-processed.

A lot of ultra-processed food has been designed to hit our brains’ reward centres and to override our natural satiety indicators - the signal our brain gives to stop eating now because we’ve had enough - so we overconsume. Pringles are a prime example of this: “Once you pop you can’t stop” is literally written on the packet. Of course, the companies who make this sort of stuff have very deep pockets for political lobbying (as well as being able to stay the right side of advertising laws by bunging in some vitamins or whatever so they can extol the health virtues of their plastic food) so governments just let them carry on making us all fat.

UPF foods should have a warning on them like cigarettes.

What quick meals do you make please? Any vege suggestions? TIA.

Hmmm. I can eat a real lot of my own cake and cooking.

Not sure why there is a myth that you cant overeat home cooked food or its not as moreish as processed food. It really is!

I agree about the warning, the biggest losers in any government attempts to push plain natural foods, fruit and veg to the fore, are food manufacturers. Their entire business model is built on us remaining overweight as a nation, eating and buying too much

I think this is why there is such negativity about WLI, theres a whole industry that does not want people to eat less and eat cheaper (non processed) foods.

Sorry haven't read the full thread yet but wanted to comment on this discussion too. long term poor blood sugar management absolutely is bad for health. Insulin resistance is very real and not all that difficult to get. I found out I had it last year and I was just slightly overweight (BMI wise) and thought I ate well. I lost a number of kg, belly fat, got rid of cravings have better energy etc all through working on my blood sugar balance by following glucose Goddess methods. Since then I've been able to increase the calories i can eat daily without gaining weight and all I had to really do is eat some veggies before my starchy carbs and have some vinegar. I also try and do my exercise after meals. So simple and so effective.

And also oats aren't bad. Good quality plain oats have good fibre and you can easily add seeds and berries to increase the fibre. It's the instant ones that are pretty useless nutrition wise

Has anyone found a good app for telling you what your UPF % is? Wish MFP had the feature.

I eat quite well but already I know I have had a fair bit of UPF today -

breakfast: porridge with flaxseed (UPF?), protein powder (UPF) and light soya milk (UPF)

snack: tea (UPF) and a plum

lunch: chicken Singapore style noodles - homemade and “from scratch” but I guess the dried noodles themselves were UPF, and a protein yogurt (UPF)

So even if not on a diet of monster munch and bacon sandwiches it can all add up.

Cheaper brands of coconut milk include emulsifiers to stop it separating.

Unless your porridge is one of those flavoured ones, then no, neither that nor the flaxseed will be UPF.
Tea - assuming you're talking a bog standard Yorkshire teabag or whatever, no not a UPF (though it will be if you've added your soya milk)
Dried noodles - generally not UPF.

Protein yoghurt - depends - a quick google tells me that if its just a plain one, it probably isn't. Once its got flavourings etc added it probably is.

Hang on that can’t be correct. Pasta is processed, not ultra processed, it’s just durum wheat 100%.

I don't eat any upf but it's more to do with having GORD/acid reflux as that's a crucial part of the diet (no additives etc). I have read CVT's book and it was a real eye opener to make me realise 'why' I shouldn't be eating that type of food.

I thought I ate relatively healthily before all my dietary issues, but now I am on another level. Although I feel very well I still do have stiff joints, but that's due to age more than anything. And my digestive symptoms haven't fully resolved, but there are underlying issues there.

DH is getting on the bandwagon now as he's doing the Zoe thing. He had an egg for a snack yesterday!!

Tea, porridge and dried noodles are generally not UPF. I think people are panicking too much. A little UPF in a can of beans or a splash of soy milk won't make much difference. Eating chicken nuggets daily might.

@landlordhell - pasta is def not upf, its 100% wheat (either white or wholemeal). Unless you buy filled pasta, some are and some aren't.

Tea (assuming tea bags) isn’t ultra-processed, noodles don’t have to be (assuming plain egg noodles, not flavoured), protein yoghurts don’t have to be. The only way to know is to read labels. That’s where the bodies are buried. Just get into the habit of checking labels. There are often non-UP versions of most stuff.

There’s so much misunderstanding on this thread about processing levels and ingredients, which I think says it all about how we have sleepwalked into a food environment where we don’t actually know or understand what’s being put into our food. Big food corporations control so much of our diet, and people think because they don’t eat chicken nuggets from Iceland they aren’t consuming artificial preservatives, gums, emulsifiers. We are eating stuff that contains stuff that essentially isn’t food, it’s stuff created so multi-billion-dollar companies can have their goods on the shelves for extended periods of time without deteriorating or to mix stuff that isn’t meant to mix, because consumers don’t like when liquids separate, etc.

Honestly, just read the labels, it becomes extremely obvious. If it has weird-sounding shit you’ve never heard of, gums, the word emulsifier, then dollars to donuts (the UPF kind) it’s ultraprocessed.

Some people don’t care and that’s fine, but everyone should at least know and understand it. There’s not much more important in life IMO than what goes into our bodies.

Unfortunately, those of us who have rarely eaten UPF will tell you that it's not a "magic pill". We still have aches and pains! I just imagine, from what I've heard, it's a lot less.

I don’t think either flaxseeds, tea or dried noodles are UPFs, as they generally don’t contain additives as far as I know.