It’s hard to look at a packet of crisps or a chocolate biscuit now without the words ‘ultra-processed food’ (UPF) flashing through your brain. It’s almost enough to put you off, but then you get sucked in by the nostalgia factor or a desperate need to dunk a biscuit in a cup of tea…
Or maybe not. If you’ve read Ultra-Processed People by TV doctor Chris van Tulleken, you might already be religiously checking the labels on your favourite snacks, pasta sauces, cereals, yoghurt, sausages, vegan meat alternatives and – worst of all – bread. You might even be putting them back on the supermarket shelf when you realise half the ingredients are pure gobbledegook; a confusing blur of additives, emulsifiers, preservatives and flavour enhancers, none of which resemble any real ingredients you could buy individually.
UPFs “are industrially processed foods and contain ingredients that aren’t typically used in home kitchens,” explains food writer and registered nutritionist Delicia Bale. “They’re also normally high in calories, fat, saturated fat, sugar, salt and low in fibre and micronutrients. In research, they have been described as ‘hyper palatable’ – they’re designed to be over-consumed.”
That’s why, once you pop you can’t stop with crisps, why a packet of chocolate buttons is gone without you even realising, and why two slices of white bread doesn’t seem to touch the sides. And the other problem is, some things you would never expect to be ultra-processed, are, like stock cubes, shop-bought pastry (“One of the harder ones to make from scratch,”) and mayonnaise. “It’s going to go off quite quickly if you make it yourself. I swap it for Greek yogurt,” says Bale. “If you find one that’s not too sour tasting, it’ll work quite well and it also increases the protein slightly and decreases the fat in recipes.”
Even some tins of coconut milk have added emulsifiers. “I don’t really understand why, because coconut milk still separates, even with an emulsifier in it,” says Bale, bemused.
Then there’s bread, which she calls “probably the most widely consumed ultra-processed food”. Homemade, it’s just four ingredients: flour, salt, water and yeast. But check the back of your supermarket loaf and the ingredients list may shock you.
Even when you are aware of UPFs and the many health dangers associated with eating them, including an increased risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers, they are ubiquitous, so can feel borderline inescapable.
Which is why Bale, 27, has written her debut cookbook, Unprocessed Made Easy. “When reducing UPFs in people’s diets, they don’t really know where to start,” she says. “So my book is focused on direct swaps for foods that typically are processed.”
She provides homemade trades for everything from granola and pancakes, to noodles, soups, pizza and burgers, while keeping costs low and, crucially, meal prepping speedy. Because this is the major issue; besides UPFs being so darned delicious and available, it seems so much quicker and easier to just buy the tinned soup or the plastic-wrapped ready meal, than buy a set of ingredients, then go home and transform it into a meal.
“People have less time, so they rely on those foods,” says Bale, without judgement. But the fact is, “a meta analysis on ultra-processed foods found that, looking at all the different studies so far, there’s been no positive association seen with consuming UPFs.” Unless you count the taste.
Bale’s mother was a personal trainer, so she grew up eating “pretty healthy” and has been interested in eating well since. While studying nutrition at the University of Surrey, she began writing recipes and fell in love with food photography. Now she has 116k followers on Instagram and one million likes on TikTok.
She says her interest in tackling UPF consumption comes from the fact “it’s not about restricting one particular type of food. Obviously, restrictive diets aren’t sustainable, I like this [area of nutrition] because I think [reducing UPFs] is something people can maintain long term.”
Growing up in Canada has also had a major impact on her understanding of food. “The way people eat here is quite different,” she says of Britain. “[In Canada] people’s main meals would be more unhealthy, but here, people’s meals are generally pretty healthy, but then they’re eating a lot of the high fat, high sugar, high salt snack foods. People don’t really eat crisps or chocolate every single day [in Canada], and then I moved here, and that’s what people were eating in their packed lunch.”
Compared to other countries, Britain is something of a UPF stronghold. “When we’re comparing ourselves to every European country, and especially Mediterranean countries, they’re still consuming some UPFs, but it’s only about 10 to 20% [of their diet] whereas here, it’s closer to 60%,” says Bale. A study in 2019 found it was a whopping 57%, and for teenagers, closer to 80%.
She’s not asking you to go full on cold turkey though. “I still do eat some UPFs,” she admits. “It’s quite difficult to avoid, especially in social situations. I don’t think it’s something that needs to be removed from people’s diets entirely. I just think it needs to be reduced by quite a lot.”
She recommends starting off by swapping one meal a day for something non ultra-processed and “not feeling like they have to remove everything all at once, because that can be quite overwhelming, and also not thinking they need to completely cut it out and never eat it again. A restrictive mindset makes it so people, if they eat one UPF, they think, ‘Oh no, I’ve broken my diet,’ and then they give up trying.”
Bale is adamant: “It doesn’t have to be difficult to make changes to your diet and eat healthier or eat less UPFs. It doesn’t have to be super complicated.” You can do it.
Unprocessed Made Easy by Delicia Bale ANutr is published by Ebury Press, priced £20. Photography by Delicia Bale. Available January 2.