UKC

https://news.sky.com/story/ultra-processed-food-linked-to-early-death-studi...

Im in my 50s now and need to watch out but I think I will need to do a massive restructuring of my diet if this is true. How depressing, do you manage an interesting diet that avoids this lot? 

If you look at that carefully, I think there's an effect that's been missed - socioeconomic status (or 'class' to be more blunt). The diet described as 'ultra-processed' corresponds with the sort of foods people on low incomes can afford to buy, both in terms of purchase cost and time spent preparing food. 

Since people with less money usually have worse access to healthcare, higher stress, more air pollution, do less exercise etc, there are a range of reasons that they might have a lower life expectancy.

I'm not saying it's just that, or that you shouldn't have a diet that's predominantly fruit, veg, and wholegrains, but it's probably not the whole story.

Isn't it the other way around  Processed crap is about as boring a diet as you can get.  It's also expensive and as here, not healthy.

Houmous, of course.

Always houmous.

From what I can tell the main barriers to eating well for most people aren’t money or time but skills and motivation.  I dread to think how much money our neighbours spent on frying fat and potatoes for the daily chip cook...

It's quick and convenient after work though when you are a bit tired and can't be bothered making a proper meal and waiting until its ready. 

I'm not saying that it's a direct "unprocessed food is more expensive", it's a little more insidious than that.

If you work a low-wage (perhaps zero-hours) job, you don't necessarily have the time or energy to cook something when you get home, so you'll buy something easy. You probably also don't have a great set of kitchen equipment, or a good kitchen, so cooking something that's more complicated is a real hassle, or maybe not even possible.

If your parents worked a long-hours, low-wage job, they probably never had the time or energy to teach you to cook, so it might well be an intimidating prospect, which you don't have the time to learn now.

​​​​​​It might not be possible to visit the shops as often if you have long hours, so you can't rely on stocking up on fresh food as often, which again means processed makes a lot more sense.

So I sort of agree and sort of disagree with you but I take your points.

The same can be said about other wage brackets.  There is exhausting, time destroying work at all wage levels.  I don’t know how much correlation there is with time pressure and wage level. 

I don’t have any kitchen power tools, only use a couple of knives, a coupe of wooden spoons and sponglers and so on.  I’ve my my trusty old pots and a frying pan.  Amazing what you can do with just those. 

Again mixed agreement.  There’re plenty of well to do middle class young adults who don’t have the first clue about cooking either, although perhaps learning is a less intimidating project.  Again, I wouldn’t ascribe time and energy loss purely to low wage jobs.

Same comments as above.  Knowing about which fresh foods you can use helps with this a lot, again coming back to education.  There are massive social factors on education - look at an old pit village around me and it’ll have a lot of obesity and schools that are well sub standard across the board.  I’m not saying that a lack of food education is the problem, but the schools don’t appear to be bastions of positivity and aspiration, which is the foundation for everything the follows.

It all sounds like an the excuse we give ourselves to not try. The fact is it can be done but food prep and quality has been pushed down the priority ladder. I've seen people who live in poor conditions who eat better than most middle class families in this country

I agree to a point, but the influences that make up our individual choices as to what to buy and what to cook are often far from helpful. Advertising is possibly the biggest culprit, and it affects us all to varying degrees whether we like it or not. Then the sheer ubiquity of processed food options in supermarkets makes it harder than ever to choose bucking the trend and shunning options that look to all the world to be cheap, tasty, nutritious and convenient in favour of putting the effort in for little apparent gain. Even worse if your workmates eat little other than processed food and give personal recommendations, as it takes an unusually strong will to go against the herd.

Hmm, pies, always pies - twa hoat pehs an an ingin ane ana

I'll be the first to admit I'm guilty as most. My Dad was really into cooking and enjoyed spending his time doing that so used to eat at a very high std on a budget that was very meagre.

It's a sad state of affairs if a large % of the population don't have the skills or knowledge to cook from basics.  Time is a factor of course, but for a lot of people it's just a matter of habit , using ready made stuff.

I don't think my parents can make anything now that doesn't come in a packet, normally with a stupid, twee name.  

I see a lot of posts saying people don't have the time to cook properly (time/energy) or have good equipment.

It seems to me that the limiting factor is knowledge about cooking and food.

I cook simple things - stir fries, paella, random mixes of veg (adding meat of fish to taste)

Preparation time about 10 min cooking time 15 - 25 min 30 min tops.

If I'm feeling really too tired I'll have a salad and cut out the cooking time

also a lot cheaper than ready meals.

I've found that the process of starting to cook and pondering how something is going to taste, and getting into the process, starts to energise me a little bit, at least until it's ready for me to eat. 

When especially tired, something like a flan you can put in the oven and some new potatoes and broccoli cooked in a steamer isn't so far from a ready meal for convenience. 

Not much. Potatoes cost very little and the fat lasts for ages.

I agree though, if you have the motivation to buy a cookery book then eating well and cheaply isn't that hard.

Yes, as an excuse it's dog ate my homework. Feeble.

Stir frying

Prep 5 mins

Cooking 5 mins; simul rice noodle cooking: 3 mins

From larder to plate 10 mins

The people moaning about the time that takes will be the same ones who haven't seen their palms for 10 years.

I'm not entirely convinced. At home I do cook, a mix of convenience stuff (oven chips/garlic bread for example) and fresh cooked. My 'kitchen' is a bombsite with a single gas ring and about 2sqft of surface so the oven gets a lot of use. I cook mostly veggi and as much as possible from fruit and veg I grow. A meal for me and my partner with say for example a shop bought block of haloumi or a handful of nuts, a vegetable and noodles added to homegrown veg, that's in the £2 to £5 range unless I happen to have just the right stuff growing seasonally (which is nice!).

At work I mostly eat Morrisons' ready meals for lunch, they're varied and rather good, also only £2/each. As I do like to fry my food and I cook with salt they're probably not much worse for me than my own fare in reality.

jk

"because my 'kitchen' is a bombsite with a single gas ring and about 2sqft of surface "

Sounds awful, is there nothing you can do to fix that?

Move away from the ghetto that is York?

I'm imagining the kitchen from the Young Ones

Ok but surely you could do it waaay cheaper if it came to it- i.e cut out the 'Nice to have' stuff like nuts and Halloumi.

I've started working shifts again over the past few months- yes it's difficult to find the motivation sometimes but I just make a giant pan of something that can be eaten hot or cold and work my way through it over a few days.

I can’t see the article, but stuff like rice, meat, vegetables are pretty easy to cook.  There is so much yummy food that happens to be good for you.  

If you like spicy food then try dhal, or homemade curry.  If you prefer traditional English food, then roast chicken and veg is easy, and you can make stuff with the rest of the chicken later on.  

Do you cook much?

Pasta with olive oil, chilli and garlic

Recipe

Dried linguine - 125g per person 

EV Olive oil - One tbsp per person

Garlic - One clove per person

Chilli flakes - One pinch per person

Parmesan

Salt and pepper

- Add pasta to boiling well salted water

- Finely mince or slice garlic

- When pasta is nearly cooked, put frying pan on medium heat with olive oil

- Drain pasta, leaving a few tbsp cooking water in pan

- Add garlic and chilli to frying pan for thirty seconds

- Add pasta and retained water to frying pan and mix on the heat until coated

- Season and grate Parmesan on top

Cooking time: 10mins

Active time 4mins

I eat this at least twice a week and so does a lot of Italy. It’s ace.

The other day I put six cherry tomatoes into a pan, and a fair amount of tomato pesto and a little bit of basil pesto, a little bit of water and most of a half a mackerel carefully sorted into chunks to remove the bones, and cooked that together with some olive oil to make the sauce, and added some spinach which was on the cusp of needing putting in the bin into cook (uncooked it wouldn't have been palatable),  and carefully cooked the spinach until it was nearly how I wanted it, then added some chestnut mushrooms cut into pieces, and some lemon juice to cut through the strength of the fishy flavour and to bring out the tomato, and once the sauce had 'done it's thing' and merged after being heated it was lovely. I added some black pepper too, but the salt in the mackerel meant none was added.  

I set a pan of cold water to heat with some dried spirally pasta in from the start to cook while I was faffing with my sauce, and turned it off when it was nearly cooked to continue to heat. The timing didn't quite work out  in the end so both were ready at once, but nothing got spoilt, and I'd almost bought a take away before looking into using what I had in. 

I think the Srour et al paper effectively takes this into consideration doesn't it?

Interesting I just worked out the price of a typical meal for the two of us (we like big portions)

So.... based on tescos prices...

onion = 10p (actually usually half but what the heck), half a leek = 31p, carrot = 6p, brocolli (third) = 20p, tin red beans = 35p, pepper (again usually a half) = 55p, rice (serving)= 32p, balsamic vinegar (dash) = 20p, olive oil (dash) = 36p, mixed herbs (dash) = 1p, pesto (quarter of jar) = 23p, garlic clove = 3p add on a fish for the meat eaters (Tescos white fish 1 out of package of 6)= 36p

Grand total = £3.08

but we do get a big pan of it

You forgot the Waitrose finest Pinot Grigio, add on £10.

https://news.sky.com/story/ultra-processed-food-linked-to-early-death-studi...

I hope that link doesn't break to. 

I used to cook veggie stuff but my partner finds it boring so he does all the cooking and he is very good at it though it can be fattening, and a bit rich and with too much meat which I'm not over the moon about. So I have got lazy over the years and left it to him but when he can't be arsed we then get into bad habits of convenience processed foods which is a lot of the time. I need to get my act together.

You know when you continue to do stuff and a part of you is screaming "stop this", when you do it but you carry on anyway? That's where I'm at. Frustrating, but I should stop winging and do something about it. 

There is no excuse for not going for the healthier and often much cheaper option but some of us seem processed to eat processed food it would seem. 

Sometimes I look at the red saturated fat and salt labels and think "yum-yum". But I am a weak and easily influenced individual. It's instant gratification versus long term health implications. That said, I bet you won't find anyone proclaiming "I wish I ate more yams..." from their deathbed

Where do you buy your veg from please?

Fried veg is going to be better for you than nearly any processed food I bet.

A friend likes his processed or 'junk food'. Try and keep in mind healthier food might help you to live longer I guess, I think sometimes life is about getting the right thoughts to stick in our heads to make us do the more helpful things. 

Tescos mainly, sometimes Sainsburys or Lidl

I know.  I have days when I'm disorganised and eat badly but I'm trying to eat better.  I do actually prefer real food.  

Swapping margarine for butter is a pleasant start, we used to be told butter is bad, but now they realised margarine isn't healthier after all that. 

We quite often use convenience foods but make them healthier, more interesting and filling by sharing a single portion of eg a pizza and adding loads of extra stuff, mainly veg from potted olives to peppers etc. 

We always have frozen peas, broccoli, cauliflower, beans in the freezer, peppers and cherry tomatoes in packs in fridge, and buy individual carrots, mushrooms, kale, onions, swede, potatoes, celery etc. Most of the veg  we microwave, often together, which is quick and means we can have a large variety of tastes and textures to add to a meal. A swede might last a week by cutting a slice each day and microwaving cubes with other veg. We are fortunate in being near both a Lidl (cheap) and a Waitrose (sells more individual veg, important if it has a short shelf life).

Tidy it would be a start! I need to fit a new one but can't until I sort the floor... Long story, don't live in a house you're renovating at a glacial pace.

Single hob cooking works fine in reality, it just takes a bit of planning. 

Jk

I could just eat rice and peas. Life's too short not to do and eat the things you enjoy.

Me too, if I cook chilli or something like that a cook a nd free a batch. My only real point was that convenience foods aren't actually that expensive if you cook an equivalent dish perhaps with the exception of pizza. 

Jk

  more building site and potting shed than student hovel.

Jk

I think that maybe they meant someone on a budget could make stuff cheaper?  

I dont buy that.

Im often very tired and cant be arsed after work. My go-to quick and easy (and inexpensive) meal is this:

Free range chicken breast. Grilled/fried with salt, pepper and paprika. 10 mins max.

Cut up chunks of a mixture of: tomatoes, lettuce, beetroot,  avocado, cucumber etc. and drizzle of olive oil and crack of pepper. Slice of wholemeal bread and butter if Im really hungry.

Voila! Healthy, quick and relatively cheap (ok free range chicken can be pricey but I refuse to anything else but this could be replaced with cheaper protein if necessary, perhaps).

I sometimes do the above but replace the chicken with cottage cheese, which is much cheaper than chicken and just as healthy, and quicker.

I remember a documentary some while ago.  

They interviewed a blobby who said "I can't afford to buy much", so off she went and bought bags of chips home for her kids.  As someone on the programme pointed out, for the money she paid for the chips she could have made them meat and two veg meal.