Reducing Ultra Processed Foods

[SnugglyJumpersMakeItBetter]

I've been reading about them and am now rather alarmed by the sheer volume of UPF I consume! At the moment they make up around 80% of my diet I'd say. I think reducing them can only help with my attempts at weightloss, as well as improve my overall health. I've decided to try and make 2 days a week completely UPF free. Would anyone like to join me?

Gosh I watched a C4 programme recently about UPFs and I was shocked at things I hadn't even considered as being UPF. Definitely need to educate myself more but I tend to do a lot of cooking from scratch so I wasn't too alarmed at my consumption (except perhaps gravy granules!).

Don't think I'm up for the challenge just yet but keen to hear how you get on!

Set out some easy swaps for yourself so its not too much in one go

So if you have bagged snacks like doritos or maize snacks, swap to plain non UPF crisps.

Chocolate bars, swap to nut bars that dont have UPFs in them, there are plenty out there

Just as examples.

Many many ready meals are not UPFs

Dont confuse UPFs with just general processed food

I'm trying to reduce mine but some things I'll never give up like my sweetener in coffee and my daily pepsi max, the ready made stock cubes when I've run out of homemade stock or a chocolate bar.

I think if the majority of your diet comes from non UPFs then it's not worth worrying about that spoonful of mayonnaise or mustard.

I bought the book Ultra Processed People. It's really an eye opener.

I'd say it's easier to tackle it a few food types at a time, starting with the ones that make up most of your diet, rather than doing days at a time. It makes the shopping simpler!

@soupyspoon

Many many ready meals are not UPFs

Are they?! I'm struggling to find any! Any recommendations? Cooking is so time consuming and it's just me, so it's not worth all the hassle. I bought some containers for bulk cooking but they take up so much space in the freezer!

It really is isn't it! Scary stuff.

I mean I havent been through every single one but each time this comes up on a thread, I seek out bog standard ready meals (nothing fancy and I wouldnt eat them personally because of flavour, not because of them being 'bad' for you), one of them was the Tesco standard lasagne, nothing in it

Conversely the Bingham meals and I think Cook also had stuff in it that you would necssarily cook with. I cant remember which specific ones.

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/310130809

Barely UPF in my view

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/279899165

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/310109145

https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/310672922

I mean I wont spam the thread with many more but just going through Waitrose most of the first 10 Ive seen are ok

It seems like cutting UPFs isn't a magic solution. I've barely touched them for over a month and haven't lost a single pound. To be fair I haven't been 'dieting' as such, no counting calories or anything. I just hoped I'd feel fuller with swapping to healthier options but that hasn't really happened. I'm going to stick at it, I think my skin is looking better at least, and even if I haven't lost I'm not gaining either. At some point I suppose I'll start tracking calories but it's much harder with home cooked food as you have to add everything up yourself!

Despite what many MNetters would have you believe, you will not lose weight by switching from low-fat to full-fat yoghurt and filling your cupboards with crosta & mollica products.
Sadly, which ever way you cut it, the ONLY way to lose weight is to eat fewer calories than you use, regardless of where the calories come from.
Now, avoiding UPFs ( which tend to be junk) is obvs better for your health, but tying yourself in knots to avoid a trace of sweetner in ketchup is not a magic bullet sadly.

Yep, good old calorie deficit

Much railed against for some reason. Probably because people dont understand basic science.

OP you have to work out your calories.

Avoiding UPFs tends to help with weight loss (particularly if you eat a lot of UPF) because of the density of whole foods, UPFs lead to weight gain due to being heavily calorific and too easy to eat. Eat a homemade burger with home made bread vs a McDonalds one I guarantee you’ll eat it slower, and be fuller longer.

That’s why switching can have a profound impact for many people. I’m a bit more balanced these days but when I went for a complete UPF cleanse 2 years ago I lost a stone in about 3 months (and my BMI was already healthy) through cutting out UPFs as far as possible, to the point I was making my own cakes and biscuits for snacks, all bread was homemade.

When people say cut UPF, or fast, or do slimming world (don’t recommend the last one!) ultimately people are just trying to find ways that feel mentally easier to get into a calorie deficit without having to actually count calories. Ultimately, none of these methods are guaranteed methods of weight loss and if applied wrong will fail. You can go UPF free but still over eat, you can eat too much in fasting periods, you can overeat on slimming world. But it doesn’t mean they ‘don’t work’. It’s finding what’s the easiest mental boundary for you. For me cutting UPFs has been the mentally healthiest way of managing my diet, I don’t feel guilty so long as I am eating whole foods.

I work in the food industry so huge disclaimer on this.

But there's actually very little to no evidence that processing or ultra processing does anything. That may (and probably will) change but right now, the claims are exceeding the science.

What we do know is that foods high in fat, sugar, salt are bad for you. We also know that foods low in protein and fibre don't fill you up. What overlaps a lot between UPFs and this basic nutrition advice is pretty much every UPF cake, biscuit, sugary sweet, crisps etc.

So I don't think it's a bad thing to cut back on UPFs but I'd cut back on the UPFs where there's just evidence that they're definitely bad. I wouldn't lose sleep about cutting back, for example on eating a meat substitute if you're vegan or soy milk if you have a dairy allergy. But cutting back on cakes, sweets, biscuits, crisps. It's all just common sense.

In a few years time there may be more evidence and one area I think is a likely thing is a lot of UPF foods are easy to overeat but these often correlate with them being low in fibre and protein. They just don't fill you up.

So personally I'd worry more about the macronutrients (which is known science) and less about UPFs (which is unknown right now). The one area I do like that they're bringing attention to though is low calorie snacks. What people look at is the calorie count for a bar or bag of something not the weight, protein and fibre. When things are processed deliberately to be low in calories, they often contain an awful lot of air. So a portion size looks like a "good" amount of food for the calories you're "spending" but in reality it's not. It's just a puff of air that leaves you wanting more.

It might sound counterintuitive because I do think most of the hype about UPF is BS, but one of the easiest ways to avoid some of the high fat, sugar, salt, low protein and low fibre foods is to eat real food. I just think the messaging of the UPF evangelists is a bit twisted. I also don't think all UPF foods are bad nor do I think that you need to be a purist about any of it.

You are making the number one mistake that people make when talking about overeating

Most people dont overeat because they feel hungry or arent satisfied. You can aboslutely overeat (in terms of calorie requirement) on non UPF foods. Im doing it right now, I want some nuts and here I am eating calorie dense nuts which will likely put me over my requirement today.

Of course you can, you haven’t read my post properly. I literally said any of the popular diet trends be that avoiding UPF, fasting etc are not fool proof because it is entirely possible to over eat doing any of them. But they can create mental constructs to help reduce eating to get into that calorie deficit, depending on how an individual applies it. For me, I over eat much more easily when eating UPFs vs when eating whole foods. And this is a common phenomenon, UPFs are literally designed to make you eat more of them.

I read your post, I get it. But although UPFs result in much more voracious overeating one might say, the poster you were replying to was making the point that its not UPFs per se that cause gain/loss etc etc, you have to pay attention to the calorie deficit, theres no way round that

People do adopt this magical thinking that as long as you eat scratch cooked food you'll be ok calorie wise. Thats not the case.

And the 'avoid UPFs' is given as a sort of panacea, that it magically reduces your cravings and needs or wants for excess calories. They dont for many of us. I cook all my own food, I dont eat UPFs, but I struggle with regulation as much as the next woman

I don’t know what to say, I don’t think I could make it any clearer. So let’s just leave it there!

I've worked in ready meals in the past and most of the processes are very similar to those used in the home. The only differences are likely to be around homogenisation of sauces (which you won't be able to see on an ingredient listing) and use of some starches or pectin to help stabilise sauces. Otherwise you generally find that most are pretty similar to what you'd make at home.

Also it's worth mentioning that some carb based foods with high amylose (rather than amylopectin) based starches will convert to resistant starch on cooling. Some of that starch will stay as resistant through reheating and act more like fibre in your body than carbs.

The downside to any preprepared foods I think is their convenience. This is my pet theory rather than anything backed up in science. But if you always are having to cook from scratch, it takes time. Say a lasagne, which I agree, you can get versions which are very close to home made in ingredients. That lasagne can be microwaved in 3-4 minutes. Make it from scratch and do it well, it will take you 2 hours. Now whether that makes a difference or not is a good question. One school of thought is with a ready meal one you're eating when you're genuinely hungry not at a fixed time. But also you could just eat as soon as you get hungry rather than waiting a little because it's just not cooked yet. That immediacy is something very different in our food system since about the 1990s. Correlation is not causation and all that of course.

I know that's what that latest paper said on fasting but it's a really thorny area (sorry to be a bit off topic but as it was raised).

When academic papers look at fasting, they tend to lump in time restricted eating (which are things like 12/12 or 16/8) and restricted days (like 5/2) in with what I'd call "proper" fasting of 24-36 hours which is discontinuous (so not 16/8) and has long periods of not eating (so not 5/2).

The evidence is a bit patchy but the reason I've started on it recently (I'm doing 1x24 hour fast per week) is because there is some evidence on it supporting insulin resistance and even reversing it. Insulin resistance just makes it super hard to lose weight. It's early days but early signs are good and suggestive of an impact which goes beyond just lower calories in / calories out.

We all want a magic wand of course and there probably isn't one and, as you say, we all want something we can find to stick to.

Ironically considering that I think a lot of the science on UPFs is pretty poor, I had mostly moved to non UPFs anyway by trying to seriously restrict sugar and refined carbs. (Read my other post for why I think that's a better way to think about the issues UPFs present.) But that had zero impact on my weight. Probably just all because of perimenopause and the associated insulin resistance that can hit at this age. (I also gave up drinking 6 months ago as well for the full list of just how healthy my diet now is. A treat is eating dried fruit.)

Oh and I exercise daily. (I did a half marathon in November and I'm still overweight lol...)

So for me, going non UPF was not really a deliberate choice but I did it anyway and it definitely didn't work. Diet, hunger etc is all linked to a whole heap of hormones in our bodies and also our mental and physical health, they're all as individual as we are. Maybe once my body has gone through this insulin reset it will start working, who knows? But if I'd adopted that diet in my 30s, I'd have been as skinny as a rake. One of the joys of perimenopause.

The more I learn, the more I think there are some "that just doesn't work for me" situations. For me a HbA1c of 5.8% was enough for me to try something a bit more drastic after 3-4 years of feeling frumpy and dumpy. If it continues as well as it started, I'm certainly never going to give it up as I've finally found the thing that's right for me.