We hear a lot about ultra processed foods don’t we? UPF! We are concerned aren’t we?
First up what actually is UPF?
Lots of foods are processed but not all of them are ultra processed. Obviously if you air dry a piece of meat, it’s gone for a process right? If you pickle an onion pickling is a process, of course. To turn pork meat into ham it has to go through a process, even mincing meat is a process. That doesn’t mean it’s ultra processed.
Ultra processed means it’s had a lot of ingredients that aren’t natural foods added to it. We are talking about many snack bars, ready meals and even breakfast cereals. Do yourself a favour and just look at the ingredients on the back of the food you’re buying. If you don’t recognise them as food something is up.
Tell you what, pick up a fish and tell me what ingredients are added to it. Better still pick up a mango or a pineapple and look for the ingredients. Are you getting my drift?
There is a book called Ultra processed people written by a gentleman called Chris Van Tulleken, chances are you’ve already heard of it, it’s an eye-opener. I’ll tell you that.
In this book the author has calculated that over 60% of the calories consumed in the UK are ultra processed ingredients, this means they are not natural food. This is a little bit scary.
Now I just assumed that health standards wouldn’t allow anything that was bad for us into our foods, I’m sure many of us feel the same way. Apparently, however, a lot of these additives colourings emulsifier or stabilises were given an ok health stamp before we properly understood gut health and the gut Microbiome. Now the gut micro biome is a subject. I will cover in another blog soon.
In terms of weight gain these ultra processed foods are a little bit of a problem. You see they are usually calorie heavy but rather light in Nutrition. They are also designed to be delicious which as you can imagine is a real problem.
Because these ultra processed foods are low in nutrition but delicious it means we as simple humans crave them. We crave them firstly because they are delicious and we find them hard to resist, but because they are also low in nutrients our bodies consume more of them than we should desperately trying to get the little bit of Nutrition that’s in them.
Please read this book, it is truly a real education. If you haven’t read it or you’re not going to read it, just take a little bit of advice from someone who’s had a good hard look at this.
Try if you can to just eat food that is clearly recognisable as natural food. Isn’t that strange that somebody should have to say this? Perhaps consider your great grandparents Would they recognise this food?
If nobody has taught you to cook then you may be relying on these ultra processed foods. You can do yourself a major favour here and the generations that follow you by learning to cook some simple delicious dishes that you will enjoy, that will give you all the nutrition that mother nature intended.
That is basically what we do at Gregg Wallace Health. We provide you with all the tools that you will need to feed yourself properly, get good nutrition and be a healthy weight while enjoying what you eat.
If you’re not gonna do that at least start having a good look at the list of ingredients on the back of your foods.
