UPFs

The Wa scored a copy of Jamie Olivers cookbook called 5. All meal done with 5 ingredients (plus salt, pepper and things like that from the pantry). I was a little sceptical but some are bloody good and definite keepers. Being only 5 ingredients they are easy to shop and cook, most are fast cook but a few are slower.

Up here in rural we eat a lot cleaner as the closest take away is 70km round trip, the local General Store* a gentle 40km. I think I like it over city eating generally speaking. I'm mastering the art of the Weber snake technique and that's generating some spectacular feeds. Chuck it on late morning, come evening melt on the mouth.... shit now I'm hungry but 3hrs until feeding window opens. Doing OK now I'm into the pattern and down nearly 9kg in nearly a month, that's an 12.5lts of extra fuel in the wings now so range has extended about 30 minutes, nice.

Maybe you should be in France, seeing as there is alot of wine being dumped

www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/25/france-fund-destroying-excess-wine-demand-falls

Really useful article and easy tips. Happy to realise we already follow all of the examples in this pic (I only recently discovered how easy it is to make your own baked beans. The kids love them too).


The only exception is breakfast cereal - we know it’s evil sugary stuff so we give the kids porridge with blueberries or bananas 5-6 days a week but we keep a packed on corn flakes in the cupboard so they can help themselves when their parents are having a a lazy Sunday lie-in (or crazy sunrise swim) 😊

Ultra-processed food swaps: What you should be eating instead: mol.im/a/12456213

Yes I’m fact the majority of UPFs are based on 4 meat & 4 plant products:

- Chicken / lamb / beef / pork
- Wheat / rice / soy / corn

The food industry worked out that if you break down these 8 base ingredients into refined forms eg dried powders, you can then recombine them in different ways to create virtually any taste, texture, shape and colour. Of course that requires lots of binding agents, stabilisers and preservatives to give the final product a good shelf life. Plus various enhancers to achieve the desired colour & flavour and texture.

The result is a man-made, industrially produced edible substance. Marketed as ‘food’ or ‘pet food’ (depending which shelf it’s meant for).

Even supermarket bread is a UPF. Which is why I now make my own - one big homemade loaf lasts the family a week.

Hope you are using organic flour without the damned Folic Acid they are now mandating be added to regular breadmaking flour

problem is what is being added to flour is not natural, its another synthetic chemical composition.
Interesting read here
breadpolitics.com/2021/07/20/does-new-zealand-need-folic-acid-fortification/
noting
Given that only 2% of the population are pregnant at any given point in time and only 0.012% of the pregnancies are actually affected by the potential effects of low folate this means that only 2-3 in 1,000,000 people would benefit. Or looking at it the other way 999,997 people have to take a potentially risky synthetic additive in their food, with no apparent benefit to them, so that three people can benefit. Is this justifiable?

I do find it somewhat ironic that we see an action like this justified as it might improve the health of a very small number of babies yet on the other hand NZ has one of the most extreme abortion laws allowing a full term baby to be aborted murdered and at the other end of the spectrum we have euthanasia laws that are just about allowing people to be killed for convenience.