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Looking for low-cost ways to replace industrially processed foods
A prototypical example of what I am looking for would be fruit juice. Where I am at the only options for something that isn't orange or apple are overpriced lemonades with about thirty to fifty percent fruit content and truly expensive 100% ones.
Usually I simply buy the expensive ones and add 1-2 parts water ending up with better tasting juice at same or less cost.
Another step would be squeezing fresh fruit yourself but that adds time, space, complexity and money costs.
What things can be done in a typical kitchen without buying additional single purpose appliances? Sufficiently multipurpose ones or small tools are fine. Basically I want to reduce the number of steps in which the food is industrially processed.
Bit of a wall of text incoming, sorry about that. But, it is a complex subject where I think it is beneficial to be aware of a more complete picture.
About fruit juice
As a fyi, fruit juice isn't really healthy is not all that good for you anyway, regardless of the process it goes through:
There are more claims about fruit juice not being good for you. I mainly kept it to the main ones. If possible, it is best to simply eat fresh fruit. Second to that is to blend fruits and vegetables in smoothie form. But there you also do need to keep an eye on the amount of produce you include.
tl;dr
Skip fruit juice, juice itself isn't healthy. Eat whole fruits. As a bonus, this is also cheap and doesn't require appliances.
But I want something to drink!?
I think the habbit you already have with diluting juice with water is already better than pure juice actually.
You could even go further and simply go for infused water. Just throw in a few fruit slices, cucumber or mint for the taste alone.
Other alternatives here would be things like (herbal) teas and if you want something cold iced tea with minimal sugar.
About processed foods themselves.
As far as "processed" foods in general go. It is somewhat important to know that there are different kinds of processing and that the whole conversation around them is confused because most people are not aware of this. It was confusing to me for a long while and there are still a lot of subtleties involved. But, there is actually more to it than "just" processing as the terminology is based on something called the "NOVA classification". In that the ultra processed food classification is where you find most foods that are simply not healthy. Here is the tricky part, it isn't necesairly because these foods are ultra processed, it is technically possible to have very healthy but ultra processed foods. But the majority of ultra processed foods are not good for a variet of reasons and for a consumer that distinction is difficult to make. So the recommendation is to avoid these.
Last year someone on tildes linked me to this new york times article (archive link) that made things a lot more clear to me.
Basically, industrial processing doesn't necesairly mean the food is less healthy or bad in general. What matters more is the sort of ingredients that are being used and what sort of processing we are talking about. Things like canned beans and frozen vegetablesare all technically processed but are often nutritionally equivalent or better because the proces of preserving them so soon after harvest preserves a lot more nutrients. These also happen to be cheaper.
In other cases, like with fruit juice, it doesn't matter where it is being processed the outcome is still something that isn't healthy for you if you drink a lot of it.
But here we are also looking at eating healthy and balanced in general. Assuming the same ingredients (I know that is often not the case, bear with me) a frozen pizza from the supermarket is about as healthy as one you make at home from scratch. Which is to say, both aren't all that great because the proportions aren't right. Because the main ingredient is bread made from white flour, it is heavy on carbohydrates and light on most other things, including dietary fiber.
What is more important is that the balance is right. Skip white flour bread but go for whole wheat bread Make sure your portions of food are alright, most people eat way too many carbohydrates when they portion things like pasta, potatoes and rice. If I did my conversion correctly for pasta and rice (dry before cooking) it is 2.6 to 3.5 ounces per person and for potatoes roughly 10 to 12 ounces.
Having said all of the above, to avoid ultra processed things and to more directly answer your question there are a variety of things you can easily make yourself at home:
Making these yourself likely will be cheaper and will give you better control over a balanced meal for sure. But,I can't stress it enough, that does mean you really need to be aware of what a balanced meal is. Otherwise it might be cheaper but not healthier.
Previous tildes discussions about the subject
This and related subjects has come up a fair few times. You might interested in those discussions as well. These are the ones I am aware of:
I grew up thinking juice was healthy.
My brother in law is a pediatrician who was morbidly obese who worked himself down to just being very fat.
When I visited he preached against orange juice and I read up about it. Liquid calories that don't fill you up, and often juice is a sugar bomb on your system. You get more nutrients absorbed if you eat the whole fruit.
You already have the exemplary label, so I can't give you more official accolades but your comment is incredibly on point.
As a former pro/current try-hard home chef, it's incredibly easy to cut out ultraprocessed foods.... if you have unlimited time and, maybe more importantly, space. I scratch-make an incredible amount of stuff in my kitchen, including many base ingredients (vinegar, clarified/rendered fats), and a lot of preservation of leftover ingredients and ingredients from my garden. It's a big part-time job worth of time, effort, and, again, space! I'm lucky that I have the skills to make it a less time-intensive activity but the space and planning are still borderline overwhelming (especially to my long-suffering wife!) On top of that, the things I make are rarely less expensive that store-bought options.
Finding the balance of time/effort, nutrition, portion size, and enjoyment is probably more important than anything else and I think your stress on that is important. I also really appreciate your pointing out that ultra-processed foods are also not generally all that worse for you than home made counterparts (outside of a couple extremely specific ingredients that I can't remember off the top of my head, though last time I looked, the science isn't definitive there either.) Turns out, pizza is kinda just not that healthy! Who would have thought?! But a proper sized portion of pizza isn't strictly bad for on occasion, it just turns out, especially in America, we're really bad at portion sizes.
I think you also pointed out three great options for approaching a more homemade life. I would also add that a building of knowledge and skill go a long way in helping reach that goal. I think that's a really intimidating concept for a lot of people though. I also speculate that that's why there are so many single-use kitchen items - surely if you want juice, you need a juicer! But I think that taking bite-sized bits out of the mountain of knowledge equates to huge progress. Just your example of salad dressings: knowing the basic composition and having a bit of a daredevil streak to experiment, you can make an insane array of dressings, sauces, and marinades. A few years ago, I challenged myself to a year of basic cooking - really perfecting fundamentals - and I saw notable advances in my knowledge and skills and I think it could really benefit most people to do little personal challenges like that. I find among my friends there is a lack of "basic" recipes to turn to on weeknights to keep things healthy, rather than doordashing an unhealthy meal. I guess I'm kind of stream-of-consciousness typing by this point, but I think "ultra-processed" foods are over-focued on as an easy demon, outsourcing responsibility entirely onto faceless companies (and don't get me wrong, companies are generally evil) instead of additionally or proportionally focusing on the balance of a meal.
But yeah, also, to paraphrase something I heard somewhere: "You wouldn't sit down and eat 8 apples in a row. Why would you drink 8 apples?"
Great addition, just one note I'd like to stress, though.
Ultra-processed foods generally do not have a homemade counterpart. The confusion comes from the fact that not all processed food is ultraprocessed. See the bit of the New York Times article I quoted. Although the article itself is worth reading entirely.
To add to the confusion, a frozen pizza can be both, depending on the ingredients used. Avoiding any processed food is then the safest option. But also, as you point, out quite intimidating and to a certain degree throwing away the baby with the bath water. In part because it is entirely possible to cook/eat unhealthy when making everything from scratch.
But buying whole grain bread made from basic ingredients is exactly the same (health wise) as baking it yourself. Even more basic, there is absolutely no reason to avoid frozen (precut) vegetables and fruits. They retain all the nutrients their raw fresh counterparts do, you can just keep in them in the freezer for longer, so overall are quite an excellent choice. Just make sure it is just produce and not something pretending to be a half prepared meal (where it includes frozen sauce).
The same is true for canned vegetables. As I said in my original comment, you can make a tomato based sauce from raw tomatoes. Which I highly recommend people try once as it tastes great! But, having canned tomatoes (just tomatoes, no added ingredients) on hand is almost just as healthy and makes it much easier to achieve the same goal.
As a rule of thumb, I suppose you can say that the more ingredients are pre-mixed by a manufacture, the more aware you need to be of what you are buying. But outside that, we come back again to a balanced meal.
As a final note,
I am stealing this, good way of putting it :)
...when i enjoy a surfeit of discretionary time, space, and money, i love sctach-making pasta sauce from fresh tomatoes, but to anyone who's never done so before: it takes a lot of tomatoes, more than you think; okay, take that ridiculously-exaggerated quantity you've added to your bag now and double it...don't forget, that also means you need to start from a ridiculously-oversized pot before you stew them down...
...as an alternative to a proper sauce, though, just course-chopped fresh tomatoes, vegetables, and herbs sautéed in a drizzle of oil + seasonings are fantastic with whole-grain pasta...
+1 on making tomato sauce from scratch. It's not hard to do (though it's not fast!), and it will have a lot more sweetness without the need to add sugar like many tomato-based canned/jarred sauces tend to have.
But I still keep tomato paste because I often can't be bothered. :P
It's also more or less impossible to cut out ultra-processed foods without limiting yourself in terms of cuisines. More or less any meat substitute is ultra-processed, and good luck cooking Chinese food. Like, I can't make my own tofu or soy sauce or zhacai, nor can I buy their constituent ingredients in a grocery store where I live. Yet the resulting meals can still easily be a lot healthier for me than something else I made without any ultra-processed foods. Imo the label "ultra-processed" ends up being pretty orthogonal to actual health and the way some people focus on it to the exclusion of other more important factors is pretty messed up.
Tofu does not classify as ultra processed. Soy sauce is a bit more tricky, traditional soy sauce does not but modern variants do. Tofu also is actually relatively easy to make at home, it is just time-consuming. But all you need for Tofu is soy beans, water and gypsum/vinegar/limejuice.
In a lot of cases processing is indeed not harmful and avoiding any processing makes things extremely difficult. It's why I think it is important for people to be aware that there is more to it.
In the end, the best thing is to be able to read labels in general, be aware of what ingredients are, what a balanced diet is, etc. But, before someone gets there I think it helps to be able to roughly look at ingredients and determine if it is "okay processed" or "not sure, let's avoid it".
Soy beans definitely are items you wouldn't typically find in grocery stores where I live, though. Even if we include specialty stores like the local Asian supermarket that stocks many things that aren't typical grocery store fare, the fresh chilis that are needed to make the pickled chili paste I use simply aren't sold here at all, but you could get them incredibly easily in China. What counts as stuff you can typically buy at the grocery store is a problem with a definition of "ultra-processed" that relies on that as a criterion, because I don't think it's all that rigorous.
But yeah I think we're ultimately on more or less the same page when it comes to the practical implications here.
Other people have already weighed in with things I would have said, so I will give you a basic shopping tip. Marketing is inversely correlated with health. The food you see ads for are never paragons of health, and are usually some of the worst foods you could eat.
This also applies to the on-package marketing. Healthy food does not need to make health claims. Have you ever picked up a stalk of broccoli with “A great source of Iron” printed on it? The bigger and bolder the claim the more likely they are trying to cover how bad the product actually is; it’s called healthwashing. That being said, a lack of health claims does not mean that something is actually a healthy choice.
And of course, the best way to be healthy is to simply focus on eating as many vegetables as you can. I like buying frozen veggie mixes because I can just microwave them and toss in a sauce; serve it with a side of something with protein and you’ve got a healthy meal.
Oftentimes, "No Added Sugar" will translate to "We used artifical sweeteners." There are exceptions, but always check the ingredients if you are sensitive to non-sugar sweeteners.
And there are billions of these marketting gotchas, because if there is one thing that marketers are good at, it's squirming past deceptive advertising accusationss as smoothly as possible.
See also: Chocolate flavored (contains no chocolate)
Ohhh, wooeeee etc. What a fall from grace from the biscuit who's theme jingle still plays involuntarily in my head whenever I see mention of it! Chocolate should be expensive (sadly, I love the stuff), and that's about it, I reckon.
I feel like the concept is a bit fallacious. The issue with ultraprocessed foods is what it allows, not the inherent property of being "ultraprocessed". Because you're "ultraprocessing" it, humans can make food that contains wildly imbalanced macronutrient mixes.
A ultraprocessed sparkling water will be healthier than a homemade fruit juice, because the latter still has all the fructose and none of the padding from fiber and cellulose and all the rest of the fruit.
IMO the better lesson is to consider the macronutrient composition of what you eat, rather than obsess over whether or not it's "ultraprocessed". All tofu you can buy is categorized as ultraprocessed, because it comes with preservatives, but I'd wager a pan fried tofu is probably healthier than 90% of the protein-rich foods most Americans eat.
Personally, I think that tracking macros is a terrible way to live. I've done it and I really hated it. I hated it so much. It was like being a slave to math equations, with so many variables to track that it's basically impossible to do without computerized assistance. Every meal was like a risk assessment. "If I eat this rich food for lunch, will I be able to quench my hunger with the right macros and limited calories for dinner?" It made me a nervous mess.
I forget the specific book I read this in (probably The Omnivore's Dilemma), but Michael Pollan had a term for this kind of outlook: nutritionism. It removes the importance of food itself by way of focusing on nutrition science. It's not what I would consider a "natural human way of thinking".
To be honest I used it as a shorthand and use it as heuristic rather than some hard rule.
Not all processed food is bad but the likelihood is higher. It could be better than homemade but that is not what it is optimized to do.
I am simply tired of having to go out of my way to avoid various foods rich in sugar, marketing and addiction optimization.
All the more reason to take this bit of advice from stu to heart.
Because fruit juice is all of the above (including even marketing due to historic reasons) even if you make it yourself. For more details, I'd of course have to refer to the comment I made elsewhere.
Should I switch to coca cola then? Fruit juice serves for me the niche of cold sweetened drink. I may reevaluate that based also on your other comment here but I don't feel my usage is high enough to do much of anything.
Maybe that example was not the best chosen but yours among other comments here are useful even despite the poor example.
Frankly, there isn't a huge difference, both are simply not healthy and contain a lot of sugar.
Ideally you don't have drinks with sugar added to them or at least not on such a regular basis that you are considering juicing fruit yourself ;) I have no clue how much you drink on a daily or weekly basis. But, in general it really is best to avoid it as much as possible.
It's what I personally did years ago. I am not saying I never drink soft drinks or have some form of fruit juice, but when I do, it is incidental.
At home, I mostly just drink water. That and coffee in the morning. Sometimes I switch it up with some tea. I also found that sparkling water works quite well in the moments where I would have gone for a soft drink.
What helped me is that I realized I didn't need my drinks to be sweet, I was just conditioned/raised with that idea. On a warm day, cold sparkling water is equally refreshing as any fruit juice.
And if I really want something sweet, well I just eat the fruit itself.
I think that example got a bit away here. I don't consider juicing fruit but it was what I thought a good example for the degrees of effort involved in doing things yourself.
Mainly I drink tea, water, mineral water and coffee which I should moderate a lot more actually.
Fair enough, but then we arrive at the stuff I wrote about in my much longer comment. You can then skip the first paragraph about juice and continue reading from there. What I am getting in there is that while it can be beneficial to do more yourself, you don't really need to exclude all processing of foodstuff. The comment is long, but that is because there is a lot of nuance to it.
If you mean the zero sugar coca colas, then honestly, yeah it would probably be healthier. The science on the health detriments of artificial sweetners shows little evidence of serious links between the two. You lack the vitamins and antioxidents of fruit juice, but for the average person's diet in the modern day an explosion of sugar is going to be worse for you.
That'd be an example of a case where an incredibly ultraprocesed food, coke zero, can be better for you than home-made fruit juice.
I made the switch years ago, and now soda with sugar tastes disgusting from how sweet it is. I even skip sugar in my coffee mostly now, unless I'm getting a latte or something. Just a splash of milk, maybe some Splenda once in awhile.
Avoiding sugar in drinks is probably the single best dietary choice anyone can make. One typical 32 oz fast food cup of Coca-Cola, the default size for most meals, is 350 calories. That's 1/5 of your daily budget for the standard 2000 calorie diet...and fruit juice is even higher.
Coke Zero, though, has no calories or sugar.
Second this. And reducing sodium and fats too. Our taste buds adjust after a few months. Not without, just little less. Baking recipes, I always reduce north Americans recipes to half of the sugar suggested, or even a third: they're insanely sweet. East Asian deserts mostly okay but can still cut a bit. And instead of soaking a Cinnamon bun with icing, just a light swirl is enough. A thin spread of icing instead of ice cream swirl twice as high as a the cupcake. Etc.
We also stopped buying diet colas because they still train us to expect sweetness even if they contain no caloric sugars
If you’re talking about snacks, there are more steps involved so while it’s not terribly complicated to bake your own cake, it’s not a 2 minutes process either. Processed food eill always be easier.
For everyday meals, buying the raw ingredients (vegetables, spices…) and cooking the meal yourself is the easiest way imho. You can also batch prep so you do t have to do it everyday if you don’t want to.
For things you can’t make (juice for example), read the labels and learn marketing cons. For example where I love you can’t say something is juice if it’s not pressed fruits. But marketers are very good at it and they’ll draw all kind of pictures and add wording on the label without every writing juice but letting you make the connection and think it is juice. Every country has these dirty tricks and you have to learn them. If you’re in Europe, the Yuka app can help pick products in the store.
It’s a worthwhile effort because it’s much healthier and you’ll save money. And you’ll get a skill that’s very useful. Good luck!
I'm having trouble understanding what you're asking.
One aspect of my difficulty is that, to me, "processed food", "ultra processed food" and "industrially processed food" are as meaningful as "chemicals".
Unless you get more specific it's really hard to give any tailored advice.
For generic advice I'd say there are 2 things you can do:
I'm not OP. For me the aspect of ultraprocessed foods I find objectionable and threatening is the high percentage of them that have been taste optimized to make cravings more likely and designed with less fiber and other methods to avoid natural signals of satiety after eating as a means of selling more. So basically most snacks and desserts that were packaged in a factory. There is interesting history where leaders from the tobacco industry migrated to large food companies and brought their attitudes toward consumers with them. I don't want to eat food that's been designed to try to addict me.
I agree with your perspective but I just object to using the terms "processed food" and/or "ultraprocessed food" since they seem to be quite badly and loosely defined and even when they are more strictly defined they seem quite useless.
Seems to me like a more useful approach, and avoiding
A more measurable goal.
Although I personally prefer positive goals over negative goals, so I'd rather strive to do something over striving to avoid something.
Somehow it makes more sense to me.
With all due respect, but they do have a definition. It is just that a lot of people are not aware of them. I can't blame you for skipping over my wall of but about halfway through I tried to provide a decent background on their meaning.
I also disagree that it is useless to make the distinction, as it makes it clear that not all food processing is bad. What @boxer_dogs_dance mentions is actually what makes a majority of ultra processed foods so harmful for us. But exactly because a lot of people are not aware of the distinction you are seeing people trying to avoid all food that is processed in some way which is, to be frank, silly.
I am not entirely sure about the link with the tobacco industry, but other than that they are not wrong.
I want to first say: I hate big parts of the food, animal & agricultural industry.
Most of us are not able to eat well enough and it is in part their fault.
I'm just arguing here that the NOVA classification and other attempts at using the term "ultra processed food" is fairly useless.
With that said....
I did in fact read your whole wall of text (and other similar texts, including the original text and included in it you have written (I've made some words italic, which I will comment below):
Unfortunately I don't really have an alternative but I still think these terms are a distraction trying to move the onus on the individual person trying to eat rather than society as a whole providing for everyone.
I'm confident that the author was using the US meaning of the term chips so if you are in the UK etc. substitute the word crisps
Agreed, and my point still stands (I'm in neither)
Hmm. Most chips/crisps that are sold in a package strike me as prime examples of food that is engineered/flavored to be hyper palatable and to have few/delayed satiety signals. It is possible to cook them at home for a healthier snack, but most of us don't.
Yes, you are exceptionally correct, but I mostly wanted to make a point... Many chips/crisps are just potatoes cut thinly and boiled in veg. oil then tossed in salt or other seasoning.
Nothing about it seems ultra processed except the fact that it is likely to be quite unhealthy for you to eat more than a little of it.
This is why I have a problem with this system for individual use: you are mostly left with indigestible information that leaves you with a sense of dread and a want to do something (as shown by OP), but it's very difficult to figure out what to do and how.
@creesch I think maybe this is the currently most succinct version of what I'm trying to say.
I'm not so sure about that. I opened up the webpage for Walmart, searched for "fries" and selected the first non-generic option, and it had quite a lot of ingredients that are beyond potatoes, salt and oil:
That's quite a lot more than potatoes, oil, and salt. The vast majority of the things in the list are normal cooking things, sure. The problem is less about the ingredients insomuch as the entire picture around it. The fries that come out of these bags have been fried once already, if not twice, and has been battered in a savory mixture. These are all things that home cooks can do, sure, but will they? Something like 99% of the time, the answer is going to be no; it's very labor intensive to do that.
Convenience is a factor that I think is often missing from these kinds of conversations. Convenience is a force multiplier for addiction. You can reproduce all of the steps to make these fries at home, but there are many logistical issues that prevent that from happening. Preprocessing eliminates that barrier.
As a force multiplier, though, it's not the root cause. Convenient apples and oranges are not making people obese, for the most part. Convenient fries and chips are.
Wow, that ingredient list is indeed terrifying.
I see now a mistake on my part, I just couldn't fathom a bag of frozen fries being made that complicated (I'm indeed privileged living where I live and being the age I am, my apologies to @Tiraon, @creesch & @boxer_dogs_dance for not understanding that).
In any way, I think my point still stands: for people (in their day to day and not as researchers or policy makers) these labels are kind if useless.
Learning to cook with basic ingredients is a way more efficient path if you want to avoid poisoning yourself with additives, save money and understand what you are eating than trying to understand what all the additives and industrial processes do.
Alternatively I support rioting and burning shit down, but that is a bit much to ask for on the open internet ;)
Maybe part of it is on me for also not wording it as clearly as I could. At the very least, it seems to me that we are viewing it from slightly different perspectives. If I am correct, your expectation is for clear-cut labels that you would be able to apply without hassle. To me, they aren't that, but more tools of awareness for people to know that not all processed foodstuff is necessarily bad, but that it comes down to what is in there. So it isn't as much that you can clearly apply these labels but that as a consumer you can be aware of the different levels of processing and through that can make better choices for yourself.
This in itself is still not easy, but comes close to what was said in the NY times article
Maybe that needs to be expanded with "if you made the same type of product". In this thread tomato sauce has been brought up a few times. So let me give a tangible example here. I am using a dutch supermarket using "classic pasta sauce". Translated the ingredient list looks something like this.
If you made tomato sauce at home, you would only use the 6 ingredients in bold. Excluding the water that leaves 9 other ingredients you wouldn't actually use, at least in that form. If you notice there is one "natural flavor" in there that is just nondescript, and of course it isn't entirely clear what they mean by extracts either. In many cases, you will find that these sauces also includes sugar as well.
Ready-made pasta sauce would be an example of something that sits close to or is ultra processed food in the NOVA classification.
So, based on that, this is the sort of food I generally try to avoid. At the same time, if we take a look at canned peeled tomatos it contains just these ingredients:
Of these, the citric acid doesn't quite belong, but I also know it is used in canning to bring the PH value down to prevent botulism. So if I am making pasta sauce at home and don't want to use fresh tomatoes this, to me, is a perfectly viable choice. In the NOVA classification, this would sit around processed food and minimal at that. Basically, by looking at the ingredients you can make the call that it is a much better choice compared to the ready-made sauce. Basically, that the distinction isn't about whether something is canned or “processed” but how far it deviates from something you would cook yourself.
What it comes down to, for me anyway, is that while the onus shouldn't be on us a consumer, in reality it often is. That also means that I want to be aware of the choices I make when buying food. This includes being aware of the spectrum of food processing, and then be aware of what I need to look for in ingredient lists and so forth. It also isn't easy, because it requires me to be able to cook, be aware of how different things can be made at home, etc. As I said, where I feel like you expect "shopping labels" to me it has helped me in understanding patterns of ingredients and formulations to avoid.
Fully agreed! But, to me anyway, having a better understanding of the differences in processing has allowed me to expand my list of basic ingredients that actually make things somewhat easier. I can save some time by using canned tomatoes, frozen vegetables and many more ingredients that are technically "processed" but not in a way that meaningfully impacts my health.
I apologise for using confusing language as I've been using "label" and "term" synonymously to mean "a way to name a group and talk about it" and not about actual labels in the store.
I'm also not talking about what any individual should or shouldn't do.
I'm only trying to make the point that scientifically, and as tools for individuals to make choices, these terms: "processed food" and "ultra processed food" are useless if we are trying to make categories for food and how they relate to human health. (Maybe I'm confused about what we are talking about in this sub-thread of the topic, but this is what I've been trying to talk about anyway.)
Your example of pre-cooked tomato sauce is an excellent example. From my understanding there is nothing in there that is inherently bad for my health and the one I do at home is probably both more calory dense, richer in fibre and might contain more ingredients.. So possibly a toss up?
Sure, it is easier to evaluate a combined food stuff the fewer ingredients there are and the more recognisable they are named, but that is another question. And as you stated you also agree to some uses of "industrial" ingredients because you know what they are and why they are in the food (like citric acid in chopped tomatoes).
What you as an individual prefer and do is irrelevant to that discussion but since this started as a person asking for advice I gave some with a little bit of a follow up.
As others have stated elsewhere in this topics comments there are things that we do know affect our health and they are not about how the food is processed but rather what is in the food and the proportions of it.
I agree it isn't a perfect distinction, but I still think it is better than no distinction where apply it to broadly.
I also don't think they are a distraction. As the whole terminology is based in research trying to understand what caused these obesity trends and in fact more clearly puts blame at manufacturers. It also gives consumers, once they are more aware of what to look for can avoid. In an ideal world that shouldn't be needed, but we aren't living in that world.
One final note about one of the points you specifically raised. Hot dogs, sausages and lunch meats often aren't that great. They are high in calories, low in protein, often contain nitrites and have large amounts of saturated fat and sodium within them.
There is some nuance here, slices from whole meat often will sit on a slightly healthier scale compared to say a salami. But overal they are a typical example of unbalanced foods.
If you want to be healthy there, and fitting for this topic, making your own lunch meats (from left overs for example) is probably the healthiest option.
Also here goes, it depends on how often you eat these sorts of things. Balancing your diet is the key here, but that does mean being aware of the makeup of what you eat and how it influences nutrient intake and all that.
Moments like these make me wish I kept a library of articles I've read.
One factoid about crossover between tobacco and manufactured foods industry: Phillip Morris bought Kraft Foods in 1988 and sold in 2007. Kraft Foods
What I mean is basicaly the number and quality of steps that the final product is removed from something grown.
I really don't know how to say it better then the example I gave, sorry. Generally less sugars, less white bread etc.
Basically I am looking for tips to do that while keeping the costs down.
Cooking from scratch is cheaper and steps closer to what is grown. An instapot is a multiuse tool that speeds the cooking process and also allows one to step away and not supervise the cooking process closely, unlike cooking something on a stove. We use our instapot to make homemade yogurt, saving money and adding protein and flavor to our breakfast hot cereal.
You could look into how to dry fruits for snacks.
I'm curious, I've seen a ton of people do this, but where does the name instapot come from? I know the InstantPot tool, but have met a lot of people call it an instapot. I don't necessarily mind, but to me it's like calling espresso, expresso.
I imagine it's similar to the many other brand names that have essentially become synonymous with the generic product name/type. e.g. People saying "Kleenex" instead of "tissue paper" even when theirs aren't Kleenex brand ones, saying "Jacuzzi" instead of hot tub, etc. However, in this case the brand name has also been blended into a portmanteau too; Instant Pot => "Instapot" instead of "pressure cooker".
With those it makes sense because there is a thing that actually has the name "Kleenex" or "Jacuzzi" or "Velcro". But how did Instant pot get shortened this way? And why do so many people say it that way? Language works in mysterious ways
I am not sure if I am following you, but the instant pot was the "thing" that was the original product of the company (which now sells more devices). It was also the one that popularized modern multi cookers combining pressure and slow cookers.
So it is actually very similar to the things you name in that regard.
Sorry, what I specifically meant here is that "instant pot" is different than "instapot". Where the other ones took the name from the other products, this one took something very similar but not what they were referencing. The only other thing I can think of is how it is common to call espresso, "Expresso"
Probably for the same reasons that people use any abbreviations or portmanteaus; They're usually catchier, faster to say, and easier to remember. Dog breeds is probably the best example of that. Would you rather say "Cocker Spaniel - Miniature Poodle crossbreed", every time someone asks you what your dog is, or "Cockapoo"? ;)
I guess it's true. I just don't think the difference between "instant pot" and "instapot" is as different as "Cocker Spaniel - Miniature Poodle crossbreed" and "Cockapoo"
It comes from using the tool in the kitchen within the family and talking about it. I imagine it's the same sort of process that led to people in the UK calling all vacuum cleaners and vacuum cleaning Hoover and Hoovering.
But I didn't buy our Instant pot tool, I've never seen it in a box with a label and I honestly thought instapot was the correct name.
I think this is very reasonable, thank you. I was just curious. Calling it an instapot really has caught on!
OK, then you will have to decide what you are comfortable with, check out ingredients (and how they are made) and learn which ones you want and which ones you don't want.
Learning to cook is possibly useful too, but maybe your time constraints don't allow for it?
I am assuming you're looking for cost reduction, instead of mostly health reasons, because of the juice dilution. Somewhat ironically, I would recommend getting a food processor called an immersion blender. The one that looks like a stick and has a few small attachments.
Pizza sauce or pasta sauce ----> canned whole tomatoes plus spices or flavouring, blended, maybe some juice removed. But this isn't necessarily ultra processed, can choose better quality off the shelf. Canned whole tomatoes go on sale much more frequently tho.
juice ---> frozen fruit immersion blended, add club soda if you want
bread / pita / pizza dough / rolls ---> look up no knead slow ferment breads to make by hand. Or hand knead. Or people are always throwing away bread makers if you want even more appliances.
sausages, hotdogs, pepperoni, pep sticks ----> they're unhealthy anyway. Replace with vegetables and actual meat. Not saying you have to eat a celery stick in a hotdog bun, but just choose a different meal entirely
salami or ham sandwich ---> get a whole chicken or chicken breast and eat slices of that instead
milk ---> powdered milk. This will be a sacrifice for cost savings. Try using 20% powdered added to 80% whole to start, then continue diluting. Use powdered whenever cooking or otherwise not directly drinking. Alternatively, wait for sales and stock up on plant based beverages, because they have a longer shelf life than milk, can bulk buy at cheap easier.
garlic : the cheapest way I've obtained them is Costco garlic bits preserved in water and citric acid.
whipped cream ---> whipping cream / heavy cream + immersion blender
fancy sauces, canned soups ---> recipe + ingredients+ immersion blender
mayo ---> recipe eggs + immersion blender. This is taking it too far imho, just buy Kewpie mayo
breaded frozen nuggets or fish or whatever ---> panko or day old bread + spices + mayo + whatever
Another suggestion is to read an old school beginners recipe book. Many of the things we take for granted today are just conveniences, and for thousands of years we've made them ourselves. Eg, pet food, breads, sauces. Don't buy packaged breads, the mark-up is insane.
Give me more examples of what you eat and what you buy and we can all suggest sample simple recipes.
I wouldn't have thought that an immersion blender would be that useful.
I was skeptical too, I grew up with a lot of single use kitchen gadgets and "it slices it dices!" garbage. But the immersion blender with the chop/mince attachment is really what I end up using instead of the stand / hand mixer or ninja blender these days. It sees daily use to make powdered protein beverage taste less powdery.
I couldn't visualize it so I went to YouTube. The chopping attachment I saw looked like a mini food processor with the immersion blender attached. Is that about what you have? Is it easier to clean than a blender or a food processor?
My parents had those old food processors that were hard to clean, those that had a juicer slot plus pusher and a huge amount of space so it never make sense if you're just trying to, say, chop half an onion plus two cloves of garlic. Yeah it's a mini version essentially. The bowl is regular bowl size and the blade is a removable bit; both fit into the dishwasher easily. Or just hand wash since there are no tricky tunnels or weird bits you have to stick your hand into carefully. Since the system relies on a powered spinning part plus attachments, you never have to wash the powered part only attachments.
Mine looks like this
I tend to "blend" some warm soapy water after I'm done blending whatever else (normally soup) and that's like 95% of the cleaning done right there, if you do it right after using it in your soup (or whatever), before anything can get dry and crusty in some nook or cranny.
I mostly use mine for making mayo with way too much garlic. It's really good.
I picked up one of those Soda Stream contraptions, which is basically just a easy-mount CO2 cartridge.
I now make carbonated beverages on demand, can add just enough flavoring to minimize health harms, and don't end up with a half-used bottle of carbonated water because I wanted one mixed drink.
I'm never buying regular soda again. The added friction means I'm less likely to absentmindedly grab one for a sugar fix, so I end up drinking less too.
I love the idea of soda steam but I've always been too cheap to take the leap. There was a time we had a huge CO2 tank on tap at home and that was really nice
When a 12 pack of soda goes for $8 and you have a family of 4, it's a lot easier to justify.
Yeah, if soda is a non-negotiable portion of grocery bill, for sure it's the way to go. I've seen people selling or practically giving their Stream stations away, just need to buy syrups (optional) and gas (main feature). It sounds like what you do makes a healthier product as well
I bought a SodaStream years ago. I liked using it. But there are two things I would bring up to anyone interested in buying one today.
The canisters are fairly small and have to be exchanged relatively frequently. If you don’t have a local retailer to exchange them it might be a pain to deal with.
The company is based in Israel, so if you’re BDS, they are one to avoid.
What's BDS?
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions
Mental note, investigate if they can be refilled at a paintball supply store.
Also something about shoplifting as boycott method.
Edit: That was easy
tldr: Buy adapter, source CO2 from local welder supply store.
The non proprietary canisters can also be refilled at brewing stores. We've done this in the past.
The much easier thing to do is to purchase a machine that won’t require an adaptor. You’d have to do a bit of research for that one though: I remember hearing about one that was popular but can’t remember what it was called.
They're proprietary so possibly not. There's online swapping services where you ship and they replace with refills but I've not had luck actually getting them swapped out locally (picked one up on Facebook marketplace a few years ago)
I see ebay has many results for 'sodastream co2 adapter'
The grey market is a beautiful thing, and why patent/copyright/contract laws need a massive overhaul.
Ah sure, I just meant "as is"
I can't speak to random eBay options ┐(´ー｀)┌
I have a couple things I'd mention based on your post that I would add to th excellent overview from creesch.
For an alternative to juice, consider Spindrift carbonated drinks. They are the only one I've found widely available whose ingredients are simply carbonated water and juice. Be careful for "Natural flavors", they can be anything! And not necessarily natural
Try, when you are buying things from the grocery store, to only buy foods that you can identify every ingredient on the label. It can be hard to find foods that meet this criteria!
Try this quiz for the New York times: it will help you navigate how to avoid ultraprocessed foods. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/05/well/eat/ultraprocessed-foods-challenge-quiz.html?unlocked_article_code=1.wE8.vCLd.Q0HTpPgeQRUv&smid=url-share
I’m going to ignore the drinks and ultra-processed discussion as other users have already covered it. My suggestion is to check out farmers markets in your area. I’m a bit of an evangelist for farmers markets and I recently had a friend admit that she’s a convert as the produce is actually cheaper than buying at a grocery chain like Safeway or Lucky. Not to mention how much better the quality is.
And that’s just scratching the surface. If you learn the seasonality of your local region, you can wait and have huge come ups for almost no money. Every summer here strawberries start out at 5-8 dollars a basket (like 10-20ish strawberries depending on size), but by mid summer I can get a flat (6 times that) for $10 dollars. Sometimes they’ll just throw a flat in for free with my other produce because they have so many!
The trick is to go towards closing. You will always feet great deals then, especially if you get to know the farmers and go weekly. Regulars get hooked up.
So now you have tons of produce that is seasonally dependent and, if you’re handy with canning, you can make food for all year. Strawberry jam, spaghetti sauce, lemon curd, pickles, the list goes on and on. And that’s ok too of just making amazing fresh food!
I suggest Cookie and Kate for recipes and she has great suggestions on replacements to help to make a great meal regardless of the season!