I have never been tempted to give up anything for Lent before, but there has been so much in the press and online about the health implications of eating ultra processed foods, that I decided it would be interesting to see how easy it would be to completely cut them out of my diet for a manageable period of time – at home at least, as I knew there would be the odd occasion where I would be eating out and might need to be a little more flexible.

In conjunction with this, I started to read ‘Ultra Processed People’ by Chris Van Tulleken which has been a huge eye opener. I was genuinely shocked, perhaps naively, that not only do UPFs have additivies to extend their shelf life, but in many cases, these foods have had traditional (and more expensive) ingredients replaced with cheap, and sometimes completely synthetically modified ingredients to keep down the cost. They are then heavily salted, sweetened, coloured and flavoured to make them palatable. I also discovered that the processes by which many of these have been created are pretty disgusting.

I wasn’t expecting it to be too difficult. I have been vegetarian for over thirty years and consider myself to have a very healthy diet, making almost all of my meals from scratch (as much born out of necessity as anything – as a single mum of three on a very low income, money has always been tight), and regularly hitting my 30 plant points a week. I bake my own bread, cakes and biscuits, I don’t have fizzy drinks (unless it’s lemonade in a Pimms in the summer!), I rarely eat crisps, I don’t like sweets and I would rather eat the occasional slice of homemade chocolate cake than a chocolate bar. I usually have a bag of Quorn sausages in the freezer, and although in the past I have used Quorn mince and chicken pieces, I prefer to use beans and lentils, and I don’t actually like any of the other fake meat products. I might have a Dominos pizza once a year, but otherwise I don’t have takeaways and I don’t buy ready meals.

In case that all sounds a bit virtuous, I will readily admit that the worst of my UPF consumption comes at Christmas, Easter, birthdays and other family gatherings when the ‘picky bits’ tea comes into its own – and I really do love a picky tea! But I was interested to see what I consumed on a more day to day basis and how easy it would be to either replace the UPFs or cut them out altogether.

I have looked at a lot of labels in my fridge, freezer and kitchen cupboards over the last few weeks and was appalled by what I saw. I quickly realised that although, yes, I make the bulk of my meals from scratch, I often rely on shop bought additions to go with them – salad dressings, stock cubes, instant gravy granules, ready roll pastry, wraps and flat breads, as well as squirty cream and cartons of custard that I keep in the fridge/cupboard to go with an impromptu dessert. My guilty pleasure is a hot chocolate, (I am a Whittards fan and despite the fact that I limit myself to one a week, I still have an awful lot of different flavours in the cupboard), and there is a particular Nordic brand of instant chai latte that I stock up on whenever I visit a Sostrene Grene shop, which I take in my flask when I am out and about. All of these contain a varying quantity of ingredients which definitely aren’t found in my kitchen cupboards – one of the hallmarks for identifying a food as ultra processed.

I was also having Weetabix for breakfast every morning which, although on the healthier end of supermarket cereals, and which I ate with natural yoghurt and fruit, is still classified as a UPF. I swapped this for overnight oats and it’s been a game changer. Why hadn’t I ever tried it before? I do know why. I thought it would be one extra thing to do at night when I am tired and there’s washing up to be done and kefir to be strained (I’ve been making my own kefir for the last year after reading that there’s a possible connection between altered gut microbiomes and CFS), and although I know that it’s hardly arduous to pour it through a sieve, it does make my heart sink when I want to go to bed and remember that it needs attention!). However, measuring out oats and pouring some water over them takes seconds. I usually even manage to find the time and energy to grate in some apple and stir in some chia seeds too!

In fact I learnt that avoiding ultra processed food is easy if you have the time and money to do so. Buying a bag of porridge oats was a cheap swap, (and the preparation was quick), but other swaps were a lot more expensive. I am still on a tight budget, even though these days I am mostly just cooking for myself, and I usually buy from the supermarket value range, on the basis that maybe they might not taste quite as good as more expensive brands, but are perfectly fine. It was therefore shocking to discover that, when I looked into it, many of these cheaper products seem to come loaded with far more additives than some of the higher quality brands for the reasons mentioned above. For example, I love to bake and I have been able to easily continue to do so by using proper butter instead of baking spreads – simple, but double the price. If I am baking something with chocolate, then I would just use a supermarket value brand because it’s only for a cake and I thought you would barely notice it. During this Lent experiment however, I discovered that Lindt 70% + dark chocolate is the most widely available bar that isn’t ultra processed, but even at the Tesco clubcard price of £2.50 for a 100g bar, it’s significantly more expensive than the 55p Tesco Miss Molly one that I would usually buy for the purpose. I could tell the difference – it tasted so much better, even in cake/dessert form – but the higher price does mean that I would bake with it less frequently, which is probably a good thing. (Alarmingly, the chocolate cake that I make for every family birthday requires 425g of dark chocolate so that’s now going to be a costly one!)

Haagen Dazs vanilla ice cream is additive free and I can keep it in the freezer for when I need something to go with an emergency dessert – a more than acceptable substitute for the squirty cream and custard – and although I am a salt and vinegar girl at heart, I am happy enough to swap to Kettle lightly salted crisps (non UPF) when crisps are needed for those picky teas. These are both more expensive than the ones I would previously have bought, but in both cases I feel that the cost is worth it. Crosta and Mollica seem to be the only brand who make flatbreads (and pizza bases) that only contain wheat, water, olive oil and salt, just as you would make them at home – and although I do sometimes make them myself, it was good to know that a quick, but still healthy, alternative was available – again, albeit at a price!

With other foods there has been a toss between how much I might want it and the time it would take to make it. For instance, I made veggie gravy from scratch to go with our Easter Sunday roast. It was easy but far more time consuming than whisking some granules into boiling water when there’s already a lot going on. Although I wouldn’t go back to gravy granules, and I would make proper gravy for special occasions, on balance I think I would just as soon have a dry dinner than make it from scratch regularly – unless I can empty the freezer a bit, make it in big batches and freeze it! I also made some sour cream and chive dip as part of our UPF free Easter picky tea which was far more tasty than the supermarket UPF version, and really quick and easy to do – although it did involve the purchase of some very expensive mayonnaise (something which I’m not sure that I would have the time or inclination to make myself). I would happily make my own shortcrust pastry but, as with mayonnaise, I feel that life is too short to attempt puff! Oh, and I did make my own hot cross buns which were fabulous and superior to supermarket ones in every way. They were very time consuming, and created a lot of sticky dough mess, but were so worth it. I was very proud of them so here’s a photo!

(It’s also the first of the things that I wanted to do this year ticked off – see my Looking Ahead post – so that was a bonus!)

I found giving up Ultra Processed Food to be a really interesting experience, that has made me rethink how I shop, cook and eat, and I am definitely going to continue with it. Over the forty days we did have two breakfasts and two lunches out, but we did choose our eateries carefully, opting for small independents where everything was prepared and cooked fresh. Strangely, the only thing that I had a craving for was mini eggs. I don’t ever actually sit and eat them out of the bag, but I always use them for Easter baking at this time of year and so I think I just missed the idea of not being able to add them to some brownie batter or rocky road. (Rocky road is a family favourite and I was a bit concerned that I would have to first bake my own biscuits before I could ever make it again, until I discovered that shortbread seems to be the only supermarket biscuit that isn’t ultra processed, yay!) However, by the time it actually got to Easter I didn’t want them anymore.

I don’t want to sound preachy because, as I have already mentioned, it does depend on having the time and the money to be able to cook from scratch and/or buy more expensive alternatives and everybody’s circumstances are different. I’m certainly going to have to economise in other areas to stick with it. I’m not sure whether I am actually feeling better for it, as I don’t think I ate enough UPF beforehand to really draw a comparison (Chris Van Tulleken ate 80% UPF for a month before switching to a UPF free diet), plus I am still feeling quite unwell from the CFS. However, the more I have read into it and the more I see what’s in most of our commonly available food and drinks, the more it puts me off consuming these cocktails of chemicals and flavour enhancers, because they can’t be doing me any good. I am trying to maintain a sensible perspective, because I am aware that I have slipped into some disordered thinking around food and eating in the past, and I know that I could very easily become completely obsessed. I don’t want to reach a point where eating something ultra processed becomes a big issue and I start to panic about it, because apart from anything it would mean that I would never be able to eat out again – but for now, it’s no longer just a 40 day experiment but a complete change of life!