Ultra-processed articles

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 have written about a typical example of the genre for The Critic.

 

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.

 

Have a read.