Ultra-processed foods and the burden on women

[Shedbuilder]

I've had two conversations this weekend with people who saw a BBC documentary on the dangers of ultra-processed foods. Both of them are mothers, both say that as far as they can see, the only way to avoid UPFs is to cook everything from scratch. Both of them are very food-aware anyway but both also work full-time. They talked about how they're going to have to be even more organised than normal, invest in an extra freezer to take even more batch-cooked meals etc. The stress in the air was palpable.

I know some men cook for the family but isn't this yet another burden that's going to be loaded mainly onto women?

Processed food tastes bad, makes you feel bad and makes you unfit. When did that become the norm?

A fair amount of processed food is delicious to its consumers, certainly makes them feel fed and sometimes even happy in the moment - and eaten as part of an overall week's meals is not by itself going to make most people "unfit", a lot else would need to be in play (eg, multimorbidities, difficulties associated with poor socioeconomic status, poor housing etc.).

[quote Peppapeg]@Shedbuilder but it's unlikely someone is going to eat a full bag of both, MN gets very strange about assumptions about stuff like this. I grew up in poverty and do a lot with food banks here, and alongside initiatives for white goods to be passed on to families who need them. I know this isn't the case up and down the country, and I know people are going to say I have no idea, but believe me I do; I've lived it and see it everyday. It still isn't as painted here.[/quote]
You mean that someone with children (because we're talking particularly about cooking for children) couldn't get through a bag of frozen nuggets and a bag of wedges?

@Whatwouldscullydo

And things like on a play date are you going to risk something fancy or stick to pizza

I dont think this helps. This notion that kids don't eat anything. The uk and probably the USA must make an.absolute mint on kidd menus etc . Do kids in Japan or Germany starve and die because of no chicken nuggets.

Sorry but Germany eats loads of processed meat!

I also think there is an expectation (and on MN), that you have to prepare and cook exciting complex, from scratch, meals, another layer of hassle and anxiety. Why, why does everyone have to produce such marvellous meals?

Most of my meals are meat or fish, and veg or salad. So, it is from scratch and not processed, but also not complicated. We all happily eat, and the kids have always eaten, pretty simple food. Roast chicken with baked potatoes and side salad, or roasted veg. Quick to prepare, stick in the oven and go and have a gin and tonic . Or steak and side salad. Or bung on a bolognese from scratch, or a chilli, don't use a jar, and really it doesn't need to cook for 3 hours (MN requirement again!), stick it all in a pan and bubble for an hour, while you relax and have your G&T (!).

We are not restaurants, or corden bleu cooks, we are just mothers who are trying our best.

So, yes, I do cook from scratch mostly, but simply, and everyone eats the same thing. However, I never bake, hate baking, so we do eat wraps, and bread, and cake and biscuits, all manufactured, and crisps. Bloody love crisps.

but it's unlikely someone is going to eat a full bag of both

surely this depends on who you are cooking for - huge difference bewteen teens and young children - and for how many.

I agree with ZoeMaye about veiwing past through rose tinted lenses - even my late 70 and 80s childhood diet really wasn't great. My children eat much better - partly thanks to more gagets - slow cooker, soup maker, bread maker and more awareness.

Some of the wost people to feed my children UPF is their DGP which isn't a money and time issue or even a skills issue. Despite feeding DH an I better they seem to feel children food is almost entiredly UPF stuff and after a prolonged stop at IL - months- where MIL insisted on doing the cooking and cooked twice once for kids and once for adults - it took months to weeks to get them back to normal food.

i think this is updated angst about e-numbers and I do think it will fall more on mothers - I know DH who cooks frequently has much less concern about what they eat than I do.

@Toothpaste123

I don't get this thread.. Not feeding your kids upf is not difficult or time-consuming.. Plenty of foods are quickly made from scratch like omelette, roast potatoes, stir fries, soups.. An omelette takes about 10 minutes to make. A lot less than heating a frozen ready-made pizza. I don't know who's fault it is that there has to be such a juxtaposition in between healthy/slow and ready-made/quick or not seeing an unprocessed food as the default diet. Processed food tastes bad, makes you feel bad and makes you unfit. When did that become the norm?

I don’t think it’s even about quick easy meals made from scratch. It’s about fussy kids who don’t want to eat those foods and exhausted stressed parents making easy cheap options that the children will eat.

You eat more if you use UPF.

It's a false economy.

A full chicken might be £5. But compared to the protein in processed nuggets, it will fill everyone up much more effectively.

If you eat proper meals you don't need snacks, and you also are much less likely to succumb to impulse purchases in every shop/place you go to, such is the culture we live in. I can't remember the last impulse bought food my family consumed - we just don't do it because we eat proper protein filled meals.

UPF is a trap - seemingly cheap and easy but absolutely makes you reliant on buying more and more, and actually consuming more of your time compared to if you just ate 2-3 meals a day

I don't get this thread.. Not feeding your kids upf is not difficult or time-consuming.. Plenty of foods are quickly made from scratch like omelette, roast potatoes, stir fries, soups.. An omelette takes about 10 minutes to make. A lot less than heating a frozen ready-made pizza.

I don’t think people really understand to what extent people are short on time. I don’t stick a pizza in the oven an twiddle my thumbs for 15 mins - I put it in the oven, I empty the dishwasher, hoover, do school reading with my child, put a wash in if needed, make pack lunches, then prep a salad to go with the pizza. If I stand there chopping veg to make a soup I still have all that stuff to do after that as well as cleaning the kitchen and getting my child ready for bed. I’m not saying it can’t be done - but at the end of a 10 hour working day I’m really fucking tired and I won’t apologise for not wanting to. I cook from scratch on days where I don’t work. Sometimes there’s leftovers for work days - if there isn’t I’m not ashamed to grab something processed out of the freezer.

@Angelica789 you're just making excuses! I cooked on a two plate electric hob and two second-hand pots for a few years! It's true that the choice of meals are somewhat limited, but it is perfectly fine to cook from scratch like that. You don't need a big expensive kitchen with multiple knives and ovens to avoid processed foods. You can boil rice, potatoes, pasta and cook your protein on the other hot plate. Chop some tomatoes and cucumber for a salad. Processed foods are for the lazy.. Sorry but that's how it is..

You eat more if you use UPF.

It's a false economy.

Surely it depends on the UPF.

Normal shop bought bread is classes as UPF it's not cheaper for us to use bread machine at home when all the costs are factored in. I've not noticed it being more filling either.

Baked beans were classed as UPF on list I saw - but when I watched another BBC program about gut bacteria they were saying common UK snack of toast, butter an beans had pefect mix of I think omega oils. So I don't think UPF is always going to be bad in every way.

I'd image there's more shop bought bread being consumed than chicken nuggest (which we don't have at all) and that's probably making up a larger % of the UPF consumed.

@Pinkblueberry yes, I understand. I also work ft and life is busy with 2 dc.. But I guess don't consider upf as food. I consider them treats. I wouldn't put upf in my own body every day, let alone inside the tummies of my growing children needing nutrition. Life can be hard though, I agree and sometimes you just have to survive the day..

Since all these conversations around UPF, I've made homemade chicken goujons and frozen them, made a massive risotto and made arancini, froze them, made a massive bolognese and froze that.

It's easy really

Homemade chips are easy too

@Pinkblueberry

UPF also makes you tired.
I am fine to cook a meal from scratch now even though I work FT and and a SP - I have much more energy now I have totally cut out the crap. You even sleep better!

Another false economy - quick hit meals that leave you more exhausted.

But I guess don't consider upf as food. I consider them treats.

I wouldn;t consider upf as treats- pretty grim stuff.

Upf is emergency food in my book.

@spacedandtimed

Homemade chips are easy too

You don't even have to peel the potatoes.

Cut them into wedges and add some oil (not processed seed oil) and stick them in the oven. It is literally 1 minute extra time than frozen chips.

@hamstersarse

Yes of course it’s the pizza and salad that’s making me tired, not getting up at 5.45 and working a physically and mentally demanding job 7.30 - 5.30 to the come home and look after a toddler
Sunday night I cooked a chickpea curry with about 8 of your 5 a day incorporated in it which I also then had for lunch and tea again but was still knackered by Monday evening - must have been that darned microwave rice I had with it that made me tired 🤦‍♀️

Well,
UPFs are unhealthy. Saying that is not an attack on women and how women spend their time.

@Pinkblueberry

I don't get this thread.. Not feeding your kids upf is not difficult or time-consuming.. Plenty of foods are quickly made from scratch like omelette, roast potatoes, stir fries, soups.. An omelette takes about 10 minutes to make. A lot less than heating a frozen ready-made pizza.

I don’t think people really understand to what extent people are short on time. I don’t stick a pizza in the oven an twiddle my thumbs for 15 mins - I put it in the oven, I empty the dishwasher, hoover, do school reading with my child, put a wash in if needed, make pack lunches, then prep a salad to go with the pizza. If I stand there chopping veg to make a soup I still have all that stuff to do after that as well as cleaning the kitchen and getting my child ready for bed. I’m not saying it can’t be done - but at the end of a 10 hour working day I’m really fucking tired and I won’t apologise for not wanting to. I cook from scratch on days where I don’t work. Sometimes there’s leftovers for work days - if there isn’t I’m not ashamed to grab something processed out of the freezer.

I'm the same, work full time and have since DD was 9 months. It takes 2 mins to chop up some potatoes into thin wedges (skin on) or broccoli into florets, sprinkle with oil and salt/pepper and put it on a tray, set a timer for 10 mins then put chicken breasts on the tray, back in the oven, set timer for 30 minutes.

In those 10 mins and the subsequent 30 minutes, get other stuff done.

Sometimes if I find myself with a few minutes in the morning I'll chop the veg then and stick it in a bowl with some cold water in the fridge so it's ready to just decant onto the tray in the evening.

@speakout there's no point in pretending that children like things like pizza, fish fingers, hot dogs, crisps etc.. I am not a totalitarian parent who bans everything unhealthy forever and ever. But to me that stuff is not food. Its stuff that can be eaten as a treat (family pizza nights, birthdays, holidays, a day out etc..)

I agree with keep it simple. That includes only making one meal. I have family who would normally cook an adult meal plus a tray of nuggets etc for the children.

Otherwise for me the ball is in the government's court. Like the food adulteration scandals of the Victorians and the 20 th century fortification of basic foodstuffs to help the national diet it's a systems issue that it's hard for the individual parents to properly address. Then there are all those places in the public arena where government had the ultimate responsibility: schools, hospitals etc.

I also hope the scientists get backing to do the necessary research into the effects on children especially the addictive nature of this.

@Bitofachinwag

Well, UPFs are unhealthy. Saying that is not an attack on women and how women spend their time.

There will always be a million excuses though as to why they are essential.

😂 It's amazing how this thread basically turned into the other one. Competitive guilt tripping now, upfs aren't food, upfs are treats, upfs are no more than emergency rations.

Personally, I don't look directly at upfs in case the bright packaging permanently rewires my brain and the brain of the baby I'm carrying. Instead of doing nuggets, I do steak or duck, it's really not that hard 🤷‍♀️

That segment going unquestioned is particularly irritating for me. Brains change all the time, that's their thing. I suspect if you completely change your diet for 4 weeks in any way you'd see changes in your brain. The woman on that programme that said 'it could be permanent', I hope she got paid a lot for that fear mongering. I don't know how else she'll sleep at night. It could be permanent in the same way it could make you smarter. They don't know. Interesting choice of words to explain what they don't know about upfs.

I really thought the brain rewiring was a bit of ,"magic" thrown in to bamboozle. Hence I want to see some research I understand as and not lots of red lines on a scan that I have no clue about!😂

There's no doubt though that a lot of research goes into making the upfs moreish (while being unsatisfying!)

I
The men who made us fat (? ) Was a good documentary to watch.

@Dozer

Just thought this, having seen the thread on ultra processed foods elsewhere on MN.

Read somewhere - it was a book by a psychologist -that worrying a lot about what our DC eat can be a sign of a mum ‘burning out’ in terms of mental health. It struck a chord with me. Will try to dig it out.

There IS a lot wrong with our UK ‘food environment’ and globally, for farmers, workers, businesses, consumers, the environment etc. But it’s not anywhere near as straightforward as mothers ‘just’ spending even more time and money meal planning, shopping and cooking, to seek to ‘purify’ DCs’ food.

I would be interested in this. I think this maybe me at the moment.