“I gave up ultra-processed foods for a week and realized that, err, I might have a problem…”

Ultra-processed foods refer to foods that have been ultra-processed during production, often with the addition of ingredients that you wouldn’t normally find in your cupboards if you tried to recreate the recipe at home (think emulsifiers, preservatives, artificial ingredients, etc. ). flavors and the like).

Basically, it’s the opposite of a whole food (think vegetables, fruits, eggs, nuts, or other foods left in their most natural state), and goes a step beyond processing a food by cooking or altering it with ingredients that a home chef would have. by hand.

“There’s a very long formal definition, but it boils down to if something is wrapped in plastic and contains an ingredient you wouldn’t normally find in a home kitchen, it’s almost certainly an ultra-processed food,” explains Dr van. tulle

Thus, UPF often includes ice cream, sausages, chips, flavored yogurts, and mass-produced bread, to name a few examples.

An easy way to identify UPF is to look for “any food with a health claim on the package, like low fat, high fiber, whole grain,” says the expert, adding, “anything like that almost it’s always ultra-processed.”

“We now have very good evidence from thousands of independent studies linking ultra-processed foods to a very wide range of harms and these include cardiovascular disease, such as strokes and heart attacks,” reports Dr van Tulleken.

He says weight gain and obesity are the most obvious risks associated with UPF, but there are a number of additional problems that can affect you, whether you gain weight or not. “It causes strokes and heart attacks, metabolic diseases such as type two diabetes, anxiety, depression, inflammatory diseases such as Crohn’s disease, dementia, cancers (all cancers, but specifically breast and bowel), and also early death for all reasons.”

His message reinforces what we already know: your diet has a big impact on your life. Research suggests that a poor diet is killing more people worldwide than tobacco, and when asked about what this entails, the author was very clear. “By bad diet we mean an ultra-processed diet.”

Naturally, your next question is probably, “Are all ultra-processed foods bad for us?” That’s certainly not the case, according to Dr van Tulleken, who points out that it’s not as simple as classifying foods as ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

“If you had to live on a desert island for a year, you’d be much better off surviving on a stack of hamburgers than a stack of broccoli. You wouldn’t survive a year eating only broccoli,” explains the expert. So when it comes to our diets, we better examine our dietary patterns. “What we think is really important is that people eat a dietary pattern that is not based on ultra-processed foods,” continues Dr. van Tulleken.

What does it mean? Well, for many of us, many of our meals center around UPF. Think about your lunch, for example. “All our sandwiches are ultra-processed, even the fancy ones,” says Dr. van Tulleken, who adds that we also follow similar patterns at dinner. Baked beans, chips, fish fingers, sausages, all of these are ultra-processed, according to the pro.

If you’re a vegetarian, you can opt for a meat alternative, but many of these products also “meet the definition of ultra-processed.”

But please don’t let this panic you. Again, “There are definitely ultra-processed foods that are not harmful. The problem is the diet pattern,” says the doctor (about one in five people in the UK and the US get 80% of calories from your UPF diet).

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It is important to note that there are several factors at play when it comes to dieting and cost is one of them.

“It’s very easy to cook real food on the cheap if you have a big kitchen and lots of Tupperware and a freezer and a lot of time to do it. But if you don’t have those things, real food is fantastically expensive,” explains Dr. van Tulleken “For many, many people in the UK at the moment, it’s unaffordable.”

He adds that he “has no advice for anyone. I want people to eat what they want. I just want people to have enough information The doctor, however, wants the government to take action, to stop UPF being marketed to children, to add warnings to foods and to tackle poverty and inequality.

For his part, Dr. van Tulleken doesn’t eat much of the UPF, but he has a different approach with his children. “My kids eat quite a bit of it,” she says. “They’re probably getting, I’d say, 20 to 30 percent of their calories from UPF,” explaining that she wants them to be able to eat the same food as their friends, especially at school.

To reiterate the above, no one is saying to give up ultra-processed foods. But if you’re interested in reducing your intake, you may find the following tips helpful.

“There is now very good evidence that many of these products for many people are addictive, and so some people will find it easier to completely cut out ultra-processed foods rather than trying to moderate them. I’m not giving this as advice . . , but some people find it, of course, much more expensive to avoid ultra-processed foods altogether,” notes Dr. van Tulleken.

After speaking with Dr. van Tulleken (and hearing him explain that reducing UPFs could help reduce everything from bloating to anxiety), I wanted to reduce my own UPF intake, but I wasn’t sure where to start

The truth is that my diet revolves strongly at UPF and I don’t think I fully realized the extent of it until I took a real stock of it for this article. A typical day for me includes a pain au chocolat on my morning commute, a sandwich for lunch and vegetarian meat alternatives for dinner, with plenty of sugary snacks in between.

It’s not just that I’m poor with time and a bad cook (although those are both factors), I usually reach for a plastic-wrapped sugary treat (or five) when I’m hungry because it’s quick comfort. I often joke that I don’t have sweet but rather sweet, plural.

When it came to giving up UPF snacks, I found the process surprisingly easy and thought the best approach for me personally would be cold turkey (unprocessed). Knowing that most chocolate bars, chips, and the like were off limits was easier than limiting myself to just a few. Instead, I filled up on non-UPF snacks (like fruits, vegetables, and nuts).

Similarly, finding low and no UPF foods wasn’t the nightmare I thought it would be. It’s worth noting that I had a little help in the form of a Gousto box of recipes for Butter Bean Burgers, Halloumi Rancheros, and Spicy Tofu Tacos, but a quick Google search returns plenty of delicious options ( whether vegetarian, like me or not) .

(For you, ordering a Gousto box doesn’t guarantee that all your meals will be 100% UPF-free. But the recipe box service says it’s committed to reducing the number of UPF ingredients in its boxes , which is already pretty low at 11%, reportedly due to items like meatless mince and broth powder.)

That I did The massive struggle I had was finding the time to prepare fresh meals from scratch every day since I didn’t incorporate bulk cooking into my weekly plan. Everything Dr van Tulleken had said was ringing in my ears it’s true that there are so many factors at play when it comes to healthy eating, from your weekly shop budget to the size of your fridge.

As for the results? Well, in the short space of a week, I didn’t notice any major positives from my altered diet. I actually felt pretty miserable the first few days. I had a constant headache (possibly caused by sugar withdrawal, though I’m not sure) and was very bloated (almost definitely caused by the huge chickpea salad I devoured on the first day). As soon as the week was over, I quickly went back to my default diet.

But moving forward, I will be working on it, trying to figure out what’s realistic for me when it comes to cutting down on junk food (although a totally UPF-free diet isn’t realistic, hopefully one with less UPF is). The truth is, I’m dying to discover more delicious recipes with low UPF.

This article is not intended to replace professional medical advice or diagnosis. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you have about a medical condition.

If you are concerned about your health or someone else’s, you can contact Beat, the UK’s eating disorder charity, 365 days a year on 0808 801 0677 or via the website .