We keep hearing how bad ultra-processed foods are for us – but can we avoid them without spending more?

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There’s been a lot of talk recently about ultra-processed foods and the harm they’re doing to our health.

It’s not just a case of causing us to pile on the pounds. There’s a lot of research that’s showing these foods can also make us more likely to develop diabetes, heart disease and even depression and cancer.

The lack of nutrients can also harm our gut health, which might leave us feeling a bit below par even if we don’t have a chronic condition.

Addictive

But the problem is that so many of us just love these foods. No one more so than TV medic Dr Chris van Tulleken, who even described his relationship with certain ultra-processed foods as “addicted”.

But then he started looking into these products, how they were developed and why he was eating too much of them.

What he found was that for food companies to make money, they had to design products that made us eat more than we needed. He gives the example of a cereal company that puts two versions of its product out to testers. If one version makes people eat five per cent more then that’s the version that ends up on the supermarket shelf.

But there’s more to the problem than that. It’s about the cost of living too.

“The number one thing customers want is cheap food,” Dr Chris told the Penguin podcast. “We live in such an unequal society. Everything is so expensive: our transport, our energy, our accommodation. We’re paying so much on rent, there’s nothing left for food.

“So consumers are hammering the supermarkets down, the supermarkets hammer the producers, so we end up with the root problem being poverty and inequality.”

Why? Because in order to make money from their products, the food companies need us to buy more of them than we really need.

Not our fault

And often ultra-processed foods are quite cheap. But because they’ve been engineered to be easy to chew and swallow, we tend to eat more of them without realising. That means, of course, that we buy more. 

It’s not our fault though, says Dr Chris. Because ultra-processed foods have been developed in a lab rather than cooked up in our kitchen at home, a lot of thought (and science) has gone into making sure we can’t resist.

The foods have also been modified to extend their shelf life, meaning of course that we’ll end up throwing less food away. That’s always a plus when we’re living on a tight budget.

But what we didn’t know until recently was how sick eating a diet heavy in these foods can make us over the long term.

Researchers have found that a homemade pizza is much less harmful to our health than an ultra-processed version from the supermarket.

And that’s even if we add lots of salt and extra cheese to the homemade one!

So that’s the bad news. The good news is that it is possible to cut back on ultra-processed foods on a tight budget.

For a start, we can drink more water. Soft drinks can contain plenty of calories but nothing in the way of nutrition. Cooking in bulk and freezing portions (if we have a freezer) can help avoid waste. It also might mean we don’t end up with a takeaway one night when we’re tired.

Gradual change

Tinned veg, beans and pulses are processed of course. But it’s the ultra-processing that Dr Chris is warning about. Tins can be a good way to get the goodness without risking the food going off. 

Porridge and overnight oats are good alternatives to ultra-processed cereals. And popping some corn in a pan is much better than packaged snacks – even if we’re adding sugar or salt.

The same goes for home baking. A homemade cake isn’t going to be as damaging as one that’s been engineered to have a long shelf life and survive being transported.

We should remind ourselves though that it’s ok to make changes slowly. No one’s saying we have to turn our diet around overnight.

As Dr Chris says, the fact that we love these foods is not our fault. And we as consumers can’t fix the problem on our own. But being able to tell the foods that will nourish us from the ones that might be making us sick means that we’ll be able to make choices that are good for our health and our wallet.

But what is an ultra-processed food?

Dr Chris has a pretty simple rule of thumb for this. If we check the ingredient list and there’s something on it that we wouldn’t find in our kitchen at home, then it’s probably ultra-processed.

Lots of these ingredients have long, chemical-sounding names and they might be there to influence the texture, the shelf life or simply because they’re cheaper than “real” ingredients.

But they’re certainly not in there for our health! Some examples of ultra-processed foods include fast foods, frozen meals like pizzas and chicken nuggets, breakfast cereals, ready meals and packaged biscuits and snacks. 

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