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Ultra-processed food
https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/what_is_ultra-processed_food
An interesting way of classifying food intake -- and which would seem to suggest that I'm currently eating a diet of well over ninety percent non-'ultra-processed' food, depending on whether you count things like butcher's sausages and white pasta (sole listed ingredient durum wheat, but made in a factory; definitions appear to vary). So far this year I've bought three packets of chocolate biscuits (and eaten two), and been given an Easter egg, and just about everything else has been cooked from scratch.
It seems a little odd to me that apparently if I buy a packet of frozen 'oven chips' it counts as 'ultra-processed', whereas if I cut a potato into slices, roll them around in a tablespoon of olive oil and a pinch of salt, and bake them for half an hour (as I did last night, when I was craving a snack), then that is in some way a completely different thing. Likewise if I buy bread, biscuits, buns or cakes, those are called 'ultra-processed', but if I bake them myself using butter, sugar, flour and eggs, then they aren't.
Although it might explain why I'm able to eat what a colleague disapprovingly calls a 'high-carb diet' involving suet puddings and serving dessert with every meal, whereas he drinks green juice, eats lean meat and goes running in an attempt to keep his weight down, and still worries about his figure -- I'm cooking everything from raw materials and 'culinary ingredients'. Doesn't stop me eating fast, sleeping badly and suffering anxiety, though, which are allegedly symptoms of an 'industrialised diet'...
An interesting way of classifying food intake -- and which would seem to suggest that I'm currently eating a diet of well over ninety percent non-'ultra-processed' food, depending on whether you count things like butcher's sausages and white pasta (sole listed ingredient durum wheat, but made in a factory; definitions appear to vary). So far this year I've bought three packets of chocolate biscuits (and eaten two), and been given an Easter egg, and just about everything else has been cooked from scratch.
It seems a little odd to me that apparently if I buy a packet of frozen 'oven chips' it counts as 'ultra-processed', whereas if I cut a potato into slices, roll them around in a tablespoon of olive oil and a pinch of salt, and bake them for half an hour (as I did last night, when I was craving a snack), then that is in some way a completely different thing. Likewise if I buy bread, biscuits, buns or cakes, those are called 'ultra-processed', but if I bake them myself using butter, sugar, flour and eggs, then they aren't.
Although it might explain why I'm able to eat what a colleague disapprovingly calls a 'high-carb diet' involving suet puddings and serving dessert with every meal, whereas he drinks green juice, eats lean meat and goes running in an attempt to keep his weight down, and still worries about his figure -- I'm cooking everything from raw materials and 'culinary ingredients'. Doesn't stop me eating fast, sleeping badly and suffering anxiety, though, which are allegedly symptoms of an 'industrialised diet'...