It sounded so simple: a week without eating ultra-processed food, for the whole family. I hoped we’d all get to enjoy cooking from scratch together, baking bread and cakes and batch-cooking. I missed out on the sourdough lockdown trend, on account of being busy keeping children alive, so thought a belated catch-up might be wholesome fun.
What I’d forgotten is that, actually, I’m still quite busy keeping children alive. So changing the way we live, especially if it involves a time investment, is perhaps better done gradually. Our evening meals typically range from ultra-processed sausages to more healthy tuna pasta or salmon (enjoyed mainly by me – but hope still wins out).
Astrid has a sweet tooth and can smell a flapjack or chocolate a mile off, but balances it out with lots of broccoli; Xavi loves ham sandwiches. All three children love cucumber and tomatoes, but also crisps. Their diet is varied, but with a few too many ultra-processed snacks.
Nonetheless, I love a challenge; my husband Mark – who cooks a lot – wants to eat more healthily and I’m horrified by the dangers of ultra-processed food, (UPFs) which is linked to long-term health risks including cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and mental health problems.
Ultra-processed food makes up two-thirds of the calorie intake for children under 14 in the UK, according to a 2021 study published in Appetite. Dr Federica Amati, nutritionist for ZOE and author of Every Body Should Know This, says these foods are a large category which have a continuum.
“Some are worse than others; eating a bacon butty in a supermarket white bap is going to have a worse health impact than eating supermarket baked beans on wholemeal toast, even though they’re both examples of a UPF breakfast,” she explains.
I’m conscious of providing a healthy diet for our children aged seven, four and 18 months. I’m also realistic. I wish there were more hours and I’d rather spend time playing than labouring over delicious food which might just be picked at for a couple of minutes. There are exceptions: Mark makes an excellent roast chicken, loved by us all, and Bolognese is immune from capricious tastes.
The first challenge was identifying ultra-processed food, which is everywhere. The British Heart Foundation describes it as typically having five or more ingredients. “They tend to include many additives and ingredients that are not typically used in home cooking. These foods generally have a long shelf-life,” according to the BHF.
Ice cream, ham, sausages, crisps, mass-produced bread, breakfast cereals, biscuits, fruit-flavoured yoghurts are all on the list. We don’t eat that much ice cream, nor many biscuits, but the rest – I’m slightly ashamed to admit – are regulars in our house. I’d even convinced myself that ham was pretty healthy, despite being processed, because of its high protein content.
We start with breakfast. Our usuals are porridge (decent), Shreddies or Weetabix (I thought I only allowed “healthy” cereal, but was a bit naive: these two are high in sugar and Dr Amati recommends removing them from the children’s diet – along with pastries, muffins and sausages) or more usually toast.
I make the children an omelette to mark our new UPF-free regime and they complain their dad’s cooking is tastier. I wish bacon wasn’t ultra-processed. We’ve run out of eggs, so move on to bread: supermarket loaves contain UPFs, but the five of us get through almost a loaf a day, so we don’t need ultra-processed preservatives to make it last.
To be UPF-free we can buy good bakery bread – £4.30 for delicious sourdough from our local Flour Pot bakery, so a very occasional treat at more than double the £1.85 for Hovis Seed Sensations – or make our own. With the help of a borrowed Tefal breadmaker, we get baking.
When I say we, Mark takes on the lion’s share, baking wholemeal loaves, sometimes helped by seven-year-old Astrid. It takes five minutes to prepare – he bungs a mix of strong wholemeal flour, white bread flour, water, olive oil, rock salt, sugar and yeast into the bread maker and it does the rest, kneading, proving and baking.
It costs approximately 60p a loaf and there’s a timer on the machine so it bakes for two hours overnight and we wake to the smell of fresh bread. We quickly declare it a life-changer – we’re saving on ultra-processed nonsense and £450 a year.
Next up is oat milk. I can no longer remember why my son Xavi, almost five, doesn’t drink cows’ milk: was he initially allergic? Or did he just not like it? I breastfed him until one-and-a-half, but since then he’s been drinking oat milk. Dr Amati reassures me that brands such as Oatly aren’t considered ultra-processed. “Rapeseed oil is added as an emulsifier, but in such tiny quantities,” she says.
Even so, I experiment with making my own, blending oats in a food processor, then straining through a sieve. An online recipe warns that over-blending leads to gloopiness. It only takes 10 minutes. We avoid gloop but it turns out tasting too…oaty. I add honey and a pinch of salt. Still rejected.
But then the children, seeing the blender, get excited about smoothies. We mix frozen berries with regular dairy milk. All three children love the smoothies and their fruit intake for the week increases as we experiment with different fruit mixes. We don’t completely cut out oat milk, but reduce from three litres of Oatly to one a week, saving £4 weekly.
The children have school meals for lunch, and I’m pleased to learn they are the healthier option, with only 1.6 per cent of packed lunches offering the same levels of nutrition as school meals, according to University of Leeds research. Xavi chooses jacket potato each day, while Astrid eats roast chicken, spaghetti and meatballs, homemade pizza – and fish and chips on Friday. We’re sent the menu in advance and, if they choose fruit for dessert, UPFs are minimal.
Our dinner times start feeling more like those of my 80s childhood when ultra-processed food wasn’t ubiquitous. My mum spent more time cooking than I do, and we’d eat meat and vegetables, with rice or potatoes; sometimes homemade Bolognese or chicken fricassee, or, less excitingly, pork or lamb chop. I remember my excitement when Findus crispy pancakes and Pop Tarts launched; Toast Toppers thankfully haven’t stood the test of time. Looking at UPF research, I feel lucky my mum put such effort in.
We skip the chops, but I batch-cook Bolognese and make chicken casserole. I enjoy the process and it’s quick – 15 minutes to prepare a chicken casserole – on account of buying pre-cut onions.
I quickly realise how used I am to the taste of ultra-processed condiments: Mark makes a stir fry with vegetables, garlic, ginger but leaves out E-number-filled oyster sauce. We skip Worcestershire Sauce in Bolognese (don’t say it’s a travesty unless you’ve tried it), teriyaki and shop-bought mayonnaise. We only use condiments in small quantities, but Dr Amati suggests removing them from the children’s diets and says they’re not ideal for adults, either – so we banish them from family meals.
Over the course of the week, though, Astrid gets more involved in cooking: chopping potatoes, oiling chicken and working the air fryer. And I start appreciating the taste of food, rather than condiments.
Our youngest daughter, Juno, drinks formula milk at night. I stopped breastfeeding her at six months and she moved onto formula, as babies are too young to drink cows’ milk, except in cooking, under a year.
Dr Amati explains that, while it’s important for young babies who aren’t breastfed, an 18-month-old has no need for this ultra-processed addition; while formula milk offers multivitamins, the majority of calories should come from whole foods, oily fish, dairy, yoghurt, cheese, no processed meat. Cows’ milk or water are perfect at bedtime.
“Formula milk is the first ultra-processed food available to babies,” she says. “In an ideal world we’d have breast milk banks, where all babies could access breast milk. As we don’t, it’s worth having formula milk as an alternative. The UK has the lowest breastfeeding rates globally.”
A Danone spokesperson says: “Nutritional value should not be reduced to whether it’s processed or not. Food processing makes it possible to fortify foods to help meet people’s nutritional needs – and public health recommendations.”
Sleep is such a premium in our home that we start gradually weaning Juno off the formula and onto dairy, adding fewer ultra-processed scoops to bottles each night.
Swaps to avoid UPFs
UPF first – then the homemade and/or free-from alternative…
- Supermarket bread – homemade bread;
- Cereal – porridge with grated apple or omelette;
- Ham and salami – cold chicken breast
- Flavoured yoghurt- plain yoghurt
- Crisps – satsumas, apples, blueberries and fruit smoothies
- Readymade pasta sauce – homemade onion, carrot and tomato pasta sauce
I thought snacks would be our downfall: our fruit bowl is always well stocked but our family also demolishes Hula Hoops. So we make our cupboards ultra-processed free. We say farewell to crisps and shop-bought flapjacks, and instead load up on fruit: satsumas, apples, blueberries, raspberries – even raisins.
After a couple of treat requests, the children help themselves to fruit instead. I’m delighted. The only exception is Friday, when we routinely choose sweets – usually a lollipop, sometimes chocolate – from the newsagent. There’s an outcry when I suggest going home instead, and I renege: overall, we’ve achieved more balance. It might be a coincidence, but the children are dysregulated after their sugar load and their games quickly descend into a squabble.
By the end of the week, I realise how helpful it’s been to examine our diet. Lots of UPFs stem from shortcuts I thought make our lives easier – but don’t. Dr Amati says ultra-processed exceptions that can form a healthy diet include All Bran cereal, baked beans, wholemeal supermarket bread, cheese crackers and some vegan replacement products.
“Generally, UPFs are high in sugar or sweeteners, fat, salt or sodium and low fibre,” she says. “The dose makes the poison; when the majority of calories come from UPFs, we’re negatively impacting health. When it’s a minority of convenience products, making up less than 20 per cent of calorie intake, we won’t need to worry so much.”
A fortnight later, freshly baked bread has become a daily habit, we make smoothies a few times a week and Juno is drinking more cows’ milk than formula. Crisps have crept back, but they’re now top-shelf goods. Astrid loves cooking – and we have less processed meat. The changes aren’t radical, but are helping us keep under the 20 per cent UPF mark.
