A lot of the articles I see about ultra-processed food feel like they've been written by Chat GPT, but I suppose that's what you get when everybody starts parroting the same tropes at the same time.
I buy many of these items all the time. Until recently, I didn’t think it was a problem. To be honest, I’m still not convinced it is a problem. The claim that they cause cancer comes from a rather sketchy preliminary study and the claim that they cause weight gain seems to be due to over-consumption rather than any inherent dangers in curry paste and “shop-bought hummus”.
In any case, I shouldn’t feel ashamed because I am not responsible for what I put in my grocery basket:
But the problem isn’t with us. The problem is structural. Arranging society so that people don’t feel they have enough time or money to make themselves a meal is a dystopian nightmare.
She is talking here about making a meal from scratch. That, after all, is the only logical solution to the conundrum posed by the UPF threat.
I don’t really cook anything from scratch. The closest I get to making a meal from scratch is when I have a fry up and a Sunday roast, both of which involve UPFs (sausages, bacon, horseradish sauce, stock cubes, etc.). I might have a boiled egg from time to time but even that involves toast and therefore UPFs.
The reason I don’t cook meals from scratch is very simple: I don’t want to. It’s not because I’m tired or stressed. It isn’t because I’m lazy. It hasn’t got anything to do with advertising. It is for the same reason I don’t brew my own beer or cut my own hair. I have better things to do with my time and I wouldn’t do a good job of it if I tried. I am therefore eternally grateful to “Big Food” for making it possible for me to go through life without every having to bake my own bread or make my own peanut butter.
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