Anyone else getting a bit frustrated with the anti-UPF crowd?
Even if you don’t follow the news about health or nutrition you must have heard about UPF (Ultra Processed Food). It’s been everywhere for at least a couple of years now. There have been documentaries, podcasts, books and numerous magazine articles, not to mention the countless social media posts from “experts” with very disparate levels of actual expertise. Therefore, I’m not going to talk about what UPF is. You can find a simple explanation here.
For people who have a basic education about these things, it seems obvious that a diet high in ultra-processed foods is not ideal. In an ideal world, we’d all be cooking nutritious meals from scratch every day. I don’t have any issues with this in theory. I would literally love it if this were achievable for everyone.
However, my problem is that the people who seem to be demonising UPF at every turn, tend to be privileged, middle class, media types who have the means to do this. They are either deliberately ignoring the situations that huge chunks of the rest of the country find themselves in or they are genuinely unaware, which may actually be worse.
In the UK, in 2023/24, 3.12million people used foodbanks. If you’ve ever donated to a foodbank, you’ll know that what they want is non perishable, long-life food items. You might think that’s because these products are logistically easier for the foodbanks to deal with, which they are, but there is another important reason. A report in 2020 found that :-
900,000 people in the UK were living without a fridge (1 in 30 earning under £35,000 a year)
1.9 million people were living without a cooker (1 in 20)
2.8 million people living without a freezer (1 in 10)
When you know these statistics it’s easy to see why lots of people rely on processed/ ultra processed food. People often rant about how cheap and easy it is to batch cook your meals for the week rather than eat ready meals or Pot Noodles but how are supposed to do that if they don’t have a cooker? Where are they supposed to store these meals if they don’t have a fridge or freezer? Your “35p a portion” home-cooked meals cost you 35p because you have a lot of the ingredients in your well-stocked cupboards. If you had to go out and buy all your herbs, spices, sauces, oils etc again, how much would it cost? It’s reminiscent of Terry Pratchett’s “Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness” and is just not realistic for a LOT of people. When people have hungry kids to feed on next to nothing can you blame them for choosing the 85p 6-pack of crisps that will give them 135 calories over the 99p 6-pack of small apples that will give them about 50? If you really want to improve people’s health you need to help people living in poverty, campaign to reduce food prices, increase access to safe, affordable housing, lower energy prices and all manner of other things that will make it easier for them to eat less UPF and stop blaming them for a “choice” which is often largely out of their control.
I have more to say about UPF but I’ll save that for another day, so until then I’ll leave you with this position statement, made earlier this year by the British Nutrition Foundation on the concept of Ultra Processed Foods :
Our position
A number of countries advise the reduction or avoidance of ‘ultra-processed foods’ (UPF), a category of foods described within the NOVA classification system by the ‘extent’, ‘purpose’ and ‘nature’ of food processing, within national dietary guidelines. This is based on evidence, largely from observational studies, linking high intakes of UPF with poor health outcomes including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity and cancer. Although such studies have shown consistent associations, it is difficult to untangle the impact of less healthy dietary patterns and lifestyles and they do not provide clear evidence of a causal association between processing per se and health. At present in the UK there is no agreed definition for UPF and they are not referred to in government dietary recommendations.
Remember folks, correlation does not equal causation!
Live Well with Lisa Proctor 