Stop eating. No really — if I can give you one tip before you bite into that sandwich/bowl of cereal/sugary snack/so-called healthy snack bar, it would be to read the ingredients.
Do you recognise everything on there? Can you visualise each one growing or being produced?
“If you can’t picture what an ingredient looks like, it’s not a good idea to eat it — it’s likely to be chemically manufactured. And where the packaging has a huge list of ingredients that includes emulsifiers, sweeteners and preservatives then that food is ultra-processed,” says nutritionist, Laura Southern. “I’ve been saying to my clients for years — if your grandma wouldn’t have heard of it then it has no place on your plate.”
So, what exactly are ultra-processed foods (UPFs)? I consulted the Harvard Health journal, which told me they’re made mostly from substances extracted from foods such as fat, starches, added sugars and hydrogenated fats. They may also contain additives such as artificial colours and flavours or stabilisers. Frozen meals, soft drinks, hot dogs and processed meats all fall within this category, as does fast food, packaged cakes and biscuits and salty snacks.
The culprits extend far wider than nosh. Southern uses pita bread as an example. If made from scratch at home you’d use flour, salt, water, oil and yeast. Nothing else is needed unless you’re feeling fancy. Look on supermarket shelves, and you’ll find some branded pita breads (some bearing a hescher) containing around 20 ingredients, including emulsifiers, gelling agents and preservatives. What even are they? If you wouldn’t have it in your kitchen cupboard it should not make it into your shopping basket, far less onto your plate or those of your children or grandchildren.
Do the ingredients read more like they've come from a lab than a kitchen? Photo: Getty ImagesGetty Images
Negative nutrition follows ultra processing Photo: Getty Images
If you read anything on a food label that looks like it would belong in a laboratory rather than your kitchen it’s likely to be ultra-processed. And UPFs are gaining notoriety. On last week’s Panorama, Ultra-Processed Food: A Recipe For Ill-Health? on BBC1, a chorus of experts including Dr Tim Spector explained how these “foods” will not only cause you to gain weight but are detrimental to your health.
“Studies have shown that an increase of as little as 1 per cent in consumption of UPFs is associated with an increase of 1.2 per cent in risk of cancer and 1.5 per cent in of Type 2 diabetes” explains retired GP and nutritional therapist Dr Jackie Rose (who practised as Dr Lewis) co-author of To Live, Healthy Jewish Food. “Change that to a 10 per cent increase in UPFs and the risks look like 12 per cent for cancers and 15 per cent for Type 2 diabetes,” she adds.
Dr Rose explains that these “Frankenstein foods”, as she terms them, are even worse news for us Jews. “We have greater risk of autoimmune diseases and cancers of the breast, prostate and pancreas as well as of inflammatory bowel disease. Regularly eating UPFs increases that risk, so it’s more important for us to avoid them.”
Choose freshly prepared foods as much as possible Photo: Getty ImagesGetty Images/iStockphoto
If you can't picture it growing on a tree think twice before eating it Photo: Getty Images
All the experts I spoke to advise giving any packaged food a swerve. “Cook from scratch with fresh ingredients,” says Dr Rose, who advises choosing fruit and vegetables, fresh meat, fish and cheeses instead. “We also need fibre to feed our gut and probiotics such as yoghurt, sauerkraut and kefir. We need plenty of natural oils that are found in oily fish, nuts, avocado and extra-virgin olive oil for our brains — which are 60 per cent fat.” She also advises including antioxidants, which you’ll also find in fresh herbs and spices.
Stick with natural yoghurts free from emulsifiers and chemical sweeteners Photo: Getty Images
Southern advises avoiding processed meats, which, she says contain lists of preservatives and chemical flavourings as well as a lot of salt. “Go to your kosher butcher for proper meat instead. If you’re going to bake cakes, use butter instead of parev spreads, which are often ultra-processed. And swap out flavoured yoghurts, especially the ones aimed at children, for natural yoghurt and add fruit or nut butters.”
The mother of three — all too aware of the difficulties of removing these often-convenient foods from our children’s diets — explains that the chemicals make the foods addictive — “If you have home-made cake you might eat more than you need but there is an off switch. You just don’t get satiety signals from UPFs.”
Assortment of unhealthy products that's bad for figure, skin, heart and teeth. Fast carbohydrates food. Space for textGetty Images/iStockphoto
Dr Michelle Braude, founder of the Food Effect Nutrition Practice, agrees: “UPFs ultimately trigger your tastebuds to crave more. I had a client who was caught up in a vicious cycle of eating parev chocolate biscuits. She felt out of control, but it wasn’t her, it was the science of the foods. The high saturated fats, hydrogenated fats and high-fructose corn syrup doesn’t trigger our satiety response. If you eat a Medjool date packed with nut butter, there’s only so many you can eat because they are natural foods. That doesn’t happen with UPFs.”
On parev puds and cakes she says: “It’s the kosher conundrum. We want something sweet after a meaty meal, and as we love to recreate creamy desserts, we tend to use non-dairy alternatives.” Many of our parev options contain UPFs so I ask her for healthier ways to end a meaty meal. “When it comes to desserts, cakes and biscuits I would always advise making your own as you know exactly what has gone into them,” she says.
“But we have busy lives, and if you do buy, look at the labels. You want to steer clear of anything with hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is really the worst — that contains transfats that are totally toxic and bad for your health. Also avoid palm oil and margarine — but that will be listed as hydrogenated vegetable oil. Read the ingredients.”
Other nasties to avoid from Dr Braude are high fructose corn syrup — which, she says, is “even worse than regular sugar” — and high amounts of any syrup. “Many of the kosher products are imported from America, and they have far less regulation on their ingredients and the health of their ingredients than the UK.”
The clear message from all the experts I spoke to was to ban or at least reduce those UPFs from your shopping list and to buy as many raw ingredients as possible. If you do buy readymade foods, pick those with the shortest list of ingredients as possible.
Laura Southern is at London Food Therapy
Dr Michelle Braude is at The Food Effect
This article was published in the JC in June 2023
