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 ?

I wouldn’t say my diet is completely free from UPF but it generally follows the 80/20 rule. We cook at home including things like broth and dashi that many people make from powder or stock cubes nowadays, but I also eat protein bars sometimes and ice cream in summer. Love Buldak too which is full of nasty UPF but that’s not something I eat every day.

Sticking to my country’s food guidelines, making sure I eat at least 30g of fibre every day, and eating several types of fermented food (including homemade) made the biggest difference for me. We’ve done all that to maximise our chances when TTC five years ago. It worked and made such a positive impact on my health, mood and energy levels that there’s no going back.

I know. It makes a huge difference. I switched post-cancer three years ago and keep to the 30 different fruit & veg a week. I feel about 20 years younger. I have loads of energy, I sleep better, I don't have any aches or pains.

I'm in my 60s and back to running, swimming, cycling. I work full time and don't even feel it. It's easy.

Food tastes much nicer. It costs less. I've got to the point I can make a meal in 15 minutes so it's no bother 😊

I really want to shift to more non-UPF as well.

@Meadowfinch what meals can you make in 15minutes? I am trying to improve my cooking skills but everything seems to take so long!

UPF free people - how are you dealing with bread? I couldn't possibly cut this out. Are you all making your own, or is there anything that can be bought that's OK?

I haven't stopped eating any specific food group except pasta and cheese. Every meal is made from fresh meat/fish & veg. I hand make my own wholemeal bread (every Sunday morning) & cakes (not very often). I make batches of jam in the autumn, enough for a year. Desserts are fruit & creme fraiche.

I make my dips and sauces. Make enough sweet chilli sauce to last a year.

I still use Tabasco and HP sauce but otherwise, everything is made from scratch.

We eat a upf free diet and find there is very little we have to cut out. There are brands out there that do upf free foods for example Piper's Farm do upf free sausages, Jason's do upf free bread, a lot of shortbread is upf free, you can get upf free ice cream it is just about checking the ingredients. Although these brands are more expensive.

We also cook more at home so we bake a couple of cakes a week for treats for the kids. You can reduce the sugar in them my kids now find shop bought cakes way too sweet. Homemade pastry is so much better than commercial same with wraps which we batch make a freeze.

I’d be really interested to see a typical few days food diary for someone who’s cut out UPF.

I’ll admit I’m not well educated on UPF’s or nutrition in general and have my whole life been a very fussy eater (I’m trying as get older to be more open but it’s just not as easy as that), so for more the thought of it sounds impossible before I’ve even began but I don’t actually know what foods would be eaten throughout the day.

anyone care to share examples of their UPF free daily menus?

Great job, OP! I eat 90-95% UPF-free now. Exceptions are generally some protein powder, a particular brand of chocolate I really like, and if I eat when out and about.

It really is incredible how much stuff is UPF when you wouldn’t think it, it’s not just ready meals, it’s so much stuff, it really has permeated its way through our entire food environment. DH is amused by me poring over labels, although I now have it down to a fine art! I am almost 40 and have never felt better.

Almost everything i eat is freshly cooked by me. Just meat, fish, egg, mayo, seafood, potatoes and salad. About 4 times a year I have a bag of chips as a treat.

Tinned tomatoes are not UPF

This. I’m 10 days in. Skin glowing. Sleep amazing. Bloat gone.

i eat some low GI fruit every meal which has quelled sugar cravings.

I went through big crusade to eliminate UPF in our family. They didn’t want to listen. I don’t preach now just try to offer up non UPF at meal times.

I try and avoid UPF’s and without question it has meant less weight gain. Just jumping on here to say for those of you who are struggling for recipes, ChatGPT is useful here. Give it a prompt that states your budget, what you like to eat, which supermarket you use and see what it suggests. “Devise a 7 day low carb protein rich meal plan for evening meals for two people using products from Ocado including fish and chicken but no shellfish budget £100 ” I use it to devise protein rich meal plans and it works well for me.

For anyone who thinks they’ll miss white bread - Nigella has a great recipe for a white loaf. Bit of a faff, but tastes amazing.

https://www.nigella.com/recipes/old-fashioned-sandwich-loaf

Making pasta at home is something I also do, but appreciate not everyone has time.

Do you make your own mayo? How long does it last for?

That's really interesting op. I'd like to hear more.

I have a question - have you made this overhaul with a household of dc? How have they adapted?

I brought up tinned toms because a friend will only use mutti (I think) because of citric acid (I think).

My point was that my diet is ok by most standards but not to the point of being fussy about tomato brands.

What do you even mean by that?
I haven’t eaten more than 5% UPF since birth because I was brought up eating a traditional British diet of home cooked food and have done the same for my children.

Typical diets of foods from most countries can include high or low levels of UPF, depending on whether the cook relies on pre-prepared ingredients.

Thanks @Meadowfinch , I’m less interested in what you eat now, and more interested in what you have stopped eating.

It’s like the people who lose 3kg a week on whatever diet they are following- IF or Fast 800.

That loss is equally based on what they were eating before. If they stopped eating KFC every day and started eating salads they will see a significant shift. I won’t see a shift if I eat their diet as I wasn’t eating KFC to start with.

The people who feel much better for having stopped with the UHPs, what was their diet before?
I don’t know whether my current diet is bad enough for the shift to make a big impact.

So the first thing I did was swap my snacks for non upf. I found a £3 or thereabouts chocolate (non artisan as too expensive for everyday). I’ve got a milk and a dark for you, I can’t tolerate dark chocolate easily but the upf guy says dark is a superfood and should be eaten every day.

its these 2 from M and S.

I eat mostly upf free - I’m not fanatical and if I’m out and about will grab a pret sandwich if I need to but on the whole I’d say we are pretty good.
typical day - sourdough toast and peanut butter (the meridian one, not sunpat!), lunch is usually Greek yogurt and nuts / dried fruit/ fruit and then dinner is something like egg fried rice (brown rice, veg, eggs - soy sauce is obviously upf but like I said, it’s not 100%!)
I don’t snack on anything like crisps and don’t really eat sugar so no cakes or biscuits etc. I’m the leanest I’ve ever been and feel really good. Lots of energy and no menopause belly despite being well old enough.

Then I swapped my crisps, I eat a pack every day

Try sharing style plates. When the kids were little I’d usually put out a salad dish, a vegetable dish, then a protein dish and a carb in the middle of the table and get them to help themselves. So roasted harrissa seasonsed chicken thighs on one plate, roasted veg on another, rice on a third. Let them help themselves, but don’t fuss about who is eating what. But be clear that there is no alternative. Dessert the same idea - bowl of fruit plus yoghurt/cream etc in another. Or homemade chocolate mousse in one, fruit in another. We still mainly eat like that now tbf.

I’ve generally not eaten a lot of UPF anyway as I like cooking from scratch but Ultra Processed People opened my eyes to stuff you wouldn’t realise is UPF.

For those asking for meal plans etc, it’s really more about ingredients. Have a look at the NOVA system that ranks foods into four groups, and there’s also an app that allows you to scan foods to see which are UPF. For example, supermarket own brand soy sauce is often UPF but Kikkoman branded isn’t. Natural yogurt is fine but a Muller Corner isn’t because of the ingredients, so it’s not always as simple as saying “don’t eat this”. But generally it’s about eating foods that have either not been processed or have only been minimally processed.

I also really recommend CVT’s book.

For breakfast I eat:

Greek yoghurt
prunes/blueberries/plum/any fruit
chia seeds
walnuts
honey (under a teaspoon)

I bought the cookbook that my mum used when I was a child. 🙂 and when I'm really on it I cook everything from scratch. But doing that everyday is time consuming and requires me to be more organised than I think I'm capable of being 🙂. Also I don't think I'm that good a cook. For instance there's no way I'm baking my own bread so I only buy sourdough, I think I read somewhere it was the "best" but I may well have made that up because I really like sourdough.

@myplace cutting out sugar made a bigger change for me - I did that first about 3 years ago. Literally stopped eating anything like chocolate , cakes, biscuits - I was having a portion a day I’d say (not excessive, but a definite ‘pudding’ after dinner) and now I just have a cup of tea. Life changing! Lost almost a stone in a few weeks and feel so much healthier, plus I don’t feel at all deprived as it doesn’t interest me at all now so I don’t feel I am missing out.