Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have been in the headlines a lot the last few years, helped not least by Dr Chris van Tulleken. If you didn’t see his programme What Are We feeding Our Kids?, it is well worth a watch if you can find it on any on-demand services. I actually think the title doesn’t do it justice as the findings relate to everyone, not just children. I’ve not yet read his book, it is on my reading list!
UPFs have become so ingrained in our lives that we don’t even notice them, they just seem normal. But, we are learning more and more about their negative consequences for our health (more on this in the next post!). This post looks at how to identify UPFs with tips on reducing your consumption of them.
How to Identify UPFs
The best way to identify ultra-processed foods is to check ingredients’ lists. The more removed the ingredient is from a whole/natural food, the more processed it is. The most highly processed foods are UPFs.
The NOVA Food Classification System is a widely used system for defining how processed foods are. It has four classifications, which I’ve outlined below with examples.
As you can see the UPF example list is huge! BUT, if all the unprocessed foods that are available to us had been listed instead of grouped under their food type name, this list would be huge too.
The NOVA classification provides the basis of several apps to help us avoid UPFs but the apps are not always reliable – it can be better to read the ingredients yourself than to rely on the apps.
You’ll see that bread appears both as a Processed Food and a UPF. This is because of the different ways bread can be made, and the ingredients added to many commercially available breads. This article from Sustain and The Real Bread Campaign discusses bread and UPFs.
Marketing
Marketing is the main reason I always tell people to look at the ingredients lists and not the front of pack “health” information. Manufacturers and marketers are there to sell the product: they know all the buzzwords, they know how to extract and promote even the smallest positive from a huge list of negatives. They know how to sell and make claims without upsetting the Advertising Standards Agency. The decision to purchase the product is down to consumer awareness, consumer education and personal responsibility.
“Made from wholegrains”
“No added sugar”
“Free from artificial flavourings”
“With added vitamins”
These are all fantastic health claims that we see on products – right up until we look at the ingredients list and see many, many ingredients that fall into the Processed and UPF NOVA classifications, with only a few, if any, that fall into the Unprocessed classification. Some nutrient fortification is done as a result of legal requirements (such as B vitamins in white flour), while others are done to make a product “healthier”. It is worth considering whether choosing alternative foods from the Unprocessed classification would be more nutritious, even without the fortification.
One food sector that has grown massively the last few years is “plant based” foods. The majority of these are Ultra-Processed Foods with little or no Unprocessed ingredients. In general, their main ingredients are not recognisable as plants by any means. They are items extracted from plants and heavily processed. They have lost the health benefits of plants – but they are often thought of as “healthy” because of they are “plant based”. I had a little rant in a blog post about this a while ago, you can read it here.
Convenience
There is no doubt that the ease of UPFs is a big factor in their popularity. The ability to just buy and eat tasty snacks straight from the shop; items that can be thrown in the oven without preparation when we are in a rush; the lack of pots, pans and mess requiring someone to clean up after food has been prepared….. These are all ‘reasons’ that add to the temptation to buy UPFs.
Here are some tips for managing that convenience while avoiding UPFs:
- Consider purchasing frozen fruit, veg and animal products to enable you to store them for longer and have them ready to use without the prep time. In the case of fruit and veg, frozen may also be more nutritious as it is frozen soon after picking reducing the nutrient loss that fresh experiences during transportation and storage.
- Find quick and simple recipes that don’t require lots of preparation (Jamie Oliver has many recipes like this, with a consideration of nutritional content).
- Batch cook – whenever you make items from scratch, make enough to freeze the remainder to give yourself some quick ready meals.
- Take food with you – take fruit (fresh or dried), nuts etc with you to keep more healthful snacks to hand instead of making impulse buys because you are hungry.
- Look out for alternatives to your UPF ‘go to’ on the shelves or food stalls – even Processed items are an improvement!
Other Pressures
Social expectations is another reason people buy into the UPFs, and to an extent it ties into marketing and convenience. The peer pressure of “you must try this” or “children need [x junk food]”. Not to mention the dreaded Pester Power when “EVERYBODY ELSE EATS THEM!”, despite your child’s relatively small actual knowledge on what anybody else eats. It is a time to consider if YOU want those foods, or for your family to have those foods regularly.
Depending on the situation it may be hard to go with your health conscious instincts. Eating out is a big factor – what other foods are available at that location/venue that meet any other dietary requirements that you have? As a vegetarian I finding more and more often that the veggie option is based around a UPF – if I want to eat a meal with everyone else, I just have to make that choice!
At this point it is important to remember that eating UPFs now and again is unlikely to do you harm (allowing for any intolerances etc that you have), it is the regularity with which we choose them (and the quantities that we eat) that contributes to the health problems.
Review Your Diet Choices – Your Why
One of the most challenging parts of reducing our UPF intake is reviewing our dietary habits – how much of these foods do we eat? How can we move away from them?
For many it is a matter that they have developed a reliability on UPFs to ‘fill the gap’ left by eliminating certain food groups (this may be done for ethical or health reasons). In these situations it may be worth considering what else the food can be replaced with; or how the whole meal can be replaced. Do you need to have that particular meal? Could you make something to fit into the existing meal? Here’s a few suggestions:
- If you’ve removed wheat from your diet: have salads instead of sandwiches
- If you’ve removed meat and fish: make a protein-rich vegetarian food to accompany potatoes and veg (for example, nut roasts or red lentil loaf, both of which can be cut into 4-6 servings and frozen); and use lentils and pulses to replace meat in homemade recipes instead of “plant based” meat substitutes (for example in a pasta sauce, or chilli)
- If you’ve removed milk: consider an egg or meat-based breakfast, or porridge made with water not “plant milk”
Think about if you actually like or want that food, or if you are just having that replacement because it is something you’ve always done. For example ‘vegan cheese’ slices on a veggie burger – do you really like the cheese replacement, or are you just having it because you’ve always had cheese in a burger? Before I was formally training in nutrition, I removed dairy from my vegetarian diet for a long time to support my allergic son and I tried those cheeses to increase my menu options – very few were palatable, and I was far from the only person thinking that! They certainly didn’t add any nutritional value to my meals. I decided to have something non-cheesy most of the time.
Thinking about the nutritional value of the food and any health benefits it provides may also be helpful to your purchasing decisions, rather than just thinking about what it doesn’t contain.
Further #ThinkAlible Reading
Over the past few months, I have published several articles that you may find helpful in the reduction of UPFs in your diet:
