Ultra Processed Food

[Heythrop51]

I found this article on ultra processed food an interesting read yesterday as they are linked to obesity, Type II diabetes and heart disease.

theguardian.com/food/2020/f...

[MichaelJH Heart Star]

Indeed, an interesting read. I would have hoped that Western Europe would have taken the lead in this area but maybe the producers of UPF have too much influence. I saw a similar article recently that said most people thought of burgers as a UPF but in fact if you make your own by mincing lean steak it is lightly processed unlike the fast food offerings!

[Ianc2]

Thanks for the post. Interesting reading.

[SpiritoftheFloyd]

Thanks for posting, an interesting read.

Since my heart attack I have spent a lot of time looking at diet, while I'm certainly no expert I think I've got quite good at weeding out this stuff.

The UPF product is a very appealing product to the producers, it has a long shelf life, for example a mass produced cake can have a shelf life of 6 weeks thanks to all the preservatives in it, similarly bread rolls in my corner store with a use by date 10 weeks forward! Also by adding tons of salt it tastes good, or rather I should say it tastes! Another example, I was at the freezer cabinet in Sainsbury's the other week and spotted a box of chip shop chicken curry rice and chips (which even before my heart attack I wouldn't have eaten!) and the salt content was 4.1g - that one meal on its own contains 69% of the recommended daily intake of salt! - Again all this salt is to give the produce some taste as the cheap components are probably tasteless.

We can't avoid UPF and as the report says the odd item won't have an impact on out health, but continued and excessive consumption will be dangerous.

The additional problem with this stuff is as the report says, it has a strong taste thanks to all the additives in it, and this has a tendency to dull the pallet, so that if you gave a child a meal cooked from scratch with clean ingredients, they would complain that the meal was tasteless - it isn't of course, it is what food should taste like, it's just they've become conditioned to UPF!

It will be hard, if not impossible to drag people back from this diet!

PS - if you spot someone wandering around the store, picking up food, reading the label, then putting it back - it will probably be me 😊