Hi, Henry. Welcome to this episode of The Healthy Bit. We're going to talk about ultra-processed
food today. And I know we're both very excited to dive into this topic. How are things going
for you at this time of year with people asking you about ultra-processed food coming up to
the festive period?
Yeah. Hi, Hayley. Yeah, good to chat. Yeah, I guess UPFs, you know, they've become quite,
I don't know if the word trendy is the right word,
but they've certainly been in the zeitgeist.
And for probably the last couple of years,
it seems like they've been really heightened.
There's always that kind of little kind of ripple effect that it,
you know, you start reading stuff in the news and books come out
and, you know, the BBC does a documentary on it
and then it kind of disappears away and then another article comes back.
And we find kind of working in the baking industry
that it's something that we're really conscious of.
And, you know, we can talk more about, you know,
what they are and how they how they use etc but um uh it's yeah probably in the last like six
months customers particularly when they come to visit the bakery or you know uh talking face to
face uh start asking questions about you know kind of you know what are the ingredients that
are going in why are you using certain things you know what does that mean why is it there
and um and I guess for me it's about um yeah you know trying to remove as many as possible
obviously baked goods are processed and by their very nature so you know it is a processed good
some things are there because we have to put them in there and then other things actually um they're
there for a justified reason but we might have an alternative so it's kind of like giving people
options but we're definitely seeing more and more customers particularly i guess the ones that are
kind of health conscious so like your kind of your retail shops you know where people are really
looking at the label maybe the customers that are buying stuff to put on a cafe menu where you know
as a customer, you know, you might be buying a, you know, a sandwich or I don't know, a burger or
something, and you're not necessarily getting the full list of ingredients unless you ask for it.
But obviously when you're in a restaurant, unless you've got an allergen, you're probably not going
to ask. You're just going to, you know, order and eat it. And they're maybe, maybe less conscious,
particularly if they're, you know, particularly places that are producing, you know, delicious
burgers, but maybe have, you know, American plastic cheese and all the other sauces and
whatnot that go into it so maybe they're less less fussed because maybe they feel like they're not
you know trying to offer healthy food but it's definitely something that is becoming more
kind of um yeah talked about and i guess for me i've been you know very aware of you know trying
to you know when you cook from scratch it's actually really hard to put ultra-prested foods
in your uh or whatever they are into your foods because you're kind of cooking from store
ingredients and stuff. But I guess it's so easy just to kind of not read the back of the label.
Whereas for me, I'm, you know, I'm always studying the back of the label and my kids are always like,
dad, can you stop reading the back of the label, particularly when it's something that they want?
But yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm just maybe just a little bit cynical and also just curious
to be like, what's in it? You know, like, is this, is this stating what it should be? You know,
it's got a nice, lovely packaging and it's got, you know, a picture of a, I don't know,
like a sunflower or a heart on it or something.
And actually, I just want to see, is this actually what it says it is?
And normally, it's not.
Yeah.
And I think when, I don't know about you, Henry,
but when obviously you have being a mum and also a mother to a daughter with an allergy,
I think as a mum, I was wanting to give my daughter the best food anyway.
So we very much always have tended to cook from scratch.
But when you're out and about and you're trying to find a snack
and something healthy for a child,
if you're not near home or you know you're traveling or something like that it's really
really difficult but having an allergy it makes you look more at the ingredient list I think I
mentioned this before that I've actually used when she was young enough I used the nut allergy
as an excuse not to give her some of the foods because I saw the amount of e-colors and everything
that goes in it I just thought I don't want to give this to you anyway like I just feel terrible
handing over this basically laboratory of chemicals to you.
And like you said, we're completely bombarded with ultra-processed foods around us.
And although the awareness is going up in terms of how we shouldn't be eating these types of food,
it's almost becoming more impossible to find the healthier options because you go around.
Yeah, totally.
And you can cut out most of the aisles just by going, I'm just not going to go down those ones
because I just need to head for the vegetables.
Isn't there like a rule that you just walk around the outside
is like the safe bit and then the inside bit, avoid them?
I've definitely seen that meme on the internet.
And yeah, you're totally right.
It's an absolute minefield.
And there's probably, you know, there's certain kind of UPFs that,
well, I guess probably maybe it'd be quite good to define what a UPF is.
And I'm not by no means an expert.
I'm just a kind of, you know, I guess I know bits about that would happen
in the or ingredients that will be used in the baking industry but obviously there's you know
the world of food and technology and you know is um is is pretty vast and a lot of these products
have been created like possibly with uh with good intentions or like you know that they were
doing a specific job whether that's keeping something crispy or stopping something from
staling or stopping something from going moldy or keeping something soft you know there's there's
quite often a reason and quite often it comes down to like actually you know if you're like
say take a loaf of bread you know if i've baked a loaf of bread and i've used really high quality
ingredients and then and then you buy it but then on day two it's now only good for toast and then
you end up chucking half away well then that feels like a waste so then you know you as a consumer
and me as a producer we get together and chat and go like well hey how can we like solve this problem
so we might be like oh well maybe you could freeze some of the bread or maybe you could
you know you know have a bigger family and eat more if it'll buy some more or maybe i could add
this little ingredient in and it will keep the bread a bit softer so that will last for three
or four days before it goes for toast and you're like great I'm now saving money and it's so what
starts off as like actually quite a kind of uh innocent and kind of sensible thing to be like
yeah of course we should you know um do this little tweak to this loaf to now make it last longer
um but suddenly you know there is those kind of unintended consequences and I guess suddenly it
becomes bread's lasting six weeks and now you've got to put all these other things in there to like
you know stop it going moldy or stop it mailing bad and whatnot and then before you know it you've
got 42 ingredients and the rest and none of it's good for you and it probably is like why did it
take us this long to figure out that maybe putting a load of um like non-natural ingredients have been
you know um yeah you know made in ways probably actually if you saw the process you wouldn't be
that um pleased to then put it in your body no and it's like the um i kind of really distinctly
remember I think that's when I got into science and I distinctly remember studying it and food
technology is obviously an area that I remember being quite popular at the time and talking about
exactly what you said in terms of food technologists looking at how can we create food that is appealing
to customers and it was all about consumer kind of selling to consumers and actually like you say
making products that are the longevity of them but also looking for the best taste and flavour
and smell and experience and hence why when you open up a pot of Pringles you get that crunch
and it's that that's also triggering all different kind of sensations in your body and your brain to
kind of want you to eat more including the products that they use very clever make you want
I mean very clever marketing isn't it so there's the whole marketing side to it and how they were
trying to develop all of those things to make it a really good customer experience but also now I
don't know if you've noticed this but i feel like now that it's turned a bit of a corner in the sense
that they're now looking to see you know quality of ingredients seems to be going down so it's like
they're trying to create the same products let's take just for example say like a chocolate product
you know the amount or percentage of cocoa or whatever they're using is probably declining
because the cost or maybe they can't import it or access it i'm not sure the exact reasons but
quality's going down speaking sorry speak from experience it'll definitely be cost that'll be
the main driver because okay so at my bakery we used to make a brioche bun and uh it had i might
have told this before but it had about 20 of the weight of flour was butter you know so it was like
super indulgent it was like a proper classic brioche bun had egg yolks in it you know free
range egg proper proper butter um you know quality flour and lots of milk again you know organic milk
and it was a very premium product.
But then as time went on,
we had to keep putting the price up
because the price of things like butter and eggs,
you know, keep going up.
And so we have to pass that cost onto the customer.
And then the customer turns around and goes,
I can't afford to keep,
you keep putting the price up.
I'm going to have to buy an alternative.
So what we,
so what we're forced with a situation of like,
well, we either just go,
no, this is the product we're selling,
but you're working with customers
who are a significant part of your business.
You can't just like,
say goodbye to them because you're like, you know, you've employed people to like produce
this product for them. So you naturally come to a situation where you go, well, we could
take some of the butter out. We'll just make it 10%, you know, and then you do some samples.
It's like, yeah, it's fine. You know, by the time you've got the burger and the sauce,
no one's going to notice and it's still a Brewer's. And then you fast for another five
years and now you're down to 5% and you're like, well, it's not really a Brewer's anymore,
but we've taken the eggs out. We've now put soy flour in because that kind of does the
same thing and you know that kind of you know maybe we can make it vegan because that kind of
fits that market and it's cheaper and uh and so you go on this kind of like sliding scale and it's
all done with like good intentions because you know as a business we're just trying to like
please our customer and they're also you know if our costs are going up their costs are going up
and so we're all kind of like just making these little decisions and then you suddenly fast
forward you're like we're now making a product that isn't we don't even call it brioche anymore
um we've changed its name um it's now got two percent butter it's still a lovely product but
it's like it's and and it and it still costs about the same as the original brioche because
you know prices have gone up but we so we've managed to kind of maintain it so in some respects
like you could look at that and go well it's kind of like a form of shrinkflation in some respects
like it's um but it's like we've like downgraded the quality of the ingredient to make something
that's then more affordable.
Now you just,
that small example for me is a bakery,
but you do that as,
you know, like a big chocolate manufacturer.
Well, if you're trying to keep your chocolate bars
at a competitive price
and you don't want them to double in price
because people are going to be outraged,
well, you just,
you either make them smaller
or you find a way to make them cheaper.
Well, mass produced stuff's already pretty cheap
because it's on a,
you know, it's on a continuous line
and it's hard to make that too much more efficient.
So then it's just downgrade the ingredients.
So like put less cocoa in.
chocolate's really expensive chocolate's been flying up this year it's it's ridiculous how
how expensive chocolate is now so if you can put less in and you can substitute it with something
cheaper great the consumer may not know and then you have to get even more clever by putting more
of these funky ingredients because obviously if you've if you've got something like chocolate that
you know it melts in your mouth it's got that lovely aroma it coats you know all that stuff
now you've removed that you've got to recreate it but you've got to do it with synthetic stuff
And that's when food becomes like an engineered laboratory, you know, incredibly clever people doing incredibly clever stuff to make it mimic what the original was like.
And that's great, but it turns out it's probably not very good for you.
No. And then that's the impact on the body, isn't it?
because it's a bit like when people sort of substitute sort of sugar for the kind of sweeteners
and things and anything in the body, it's, you know, we've got receptors in the body. So it's
going to trick the body to think that you're getting certain food sources or food types or
that experience in the brain and that kind of trickery that you just mentioned. And, but I think
as you, as you said, sort of, I think how people define ultra processed food, I think is really
variable across the population and I think whether that's down to just awareness or education or
even just personal interest in health so some people are very health conscious and they're
sort of really into it and it seems to be you're either really into it or you're really not bothered
and some people are still on the not bothered pile and that to me is quite terrifying because
it's around us all the time it's impossible not to pick and I don't feel like this but whenever I
go to a shop I'm fascinated by what people put in there in their baskets and and it is hard if you
want to go and buy something from from a shop because you're on the road or you're traveling
and and there you are standing with you like one piece of fruit because that's the healthiest thing
you found and you've probably had to probably go for a salad because that but it's still a bit
processed because it's in a in a box and it's probably been added yeah other things added to it
so it's not the best but then you're you're standing amongst people who are probably
packing their trolleys and you it's like spot the healthy bit literally literally so it's trying to
find the one thing that you think gosh they're they're um they're supermarket trolleys just
rammed with you know refined white bread crisps uh chocolates everything fizzy pop
and you think blimey and you just think your body cannot cope with that um and then we we wonder why
you know the health and the population's health is is really suffering um and we all know don't
we that you know ultra processed foods probably going to increase our risk of cardiovascular
disease and you know the chances of having um possibly a stroke or coronary artery disease
is is higher and it's something high like 40 to 66 percent increase if you do eat these kinds of
foods alongside risks of cancer and having heart related issues and just basically having
high blood pressure and even impacts on mental health and sleep and that sort of thing.
But I don think the more microbiology impact is spoken about and that what interests me because it can impact on your tendons on your bone cells on your muscle cells People probably don think about that when they
pop these things into their mouth. But it is, you know, and they wonder probably why their tendons
have stiffened up, because our tendons, you know, rely on collagen. And these ultra processed foods
can really impact on the kind of process that the tendon goes through in terms of the tendon
cell turnover. And then what impact that has in terms of any kind of recovery. And if you're not
exercising and, you know, what else is your diet like? And what else do you do? Do you even exercise?
Some people might not. And they're having a high sort of level of ultra processed foods.
So then they're going to get fatty infiltration into their muscles. And it's a whole cascade
of chaos that's going on through their body. And then they wonder why, you know, we're seeing
a generation that's getting weaker, because their fat level to protein and muscle combination is
poor. So that kind of ratio between the two is significantly impacted on just by what we're
putting into our mouth. And that really terrifies me actually as a concern for the population.
when you um when you're in the shops and you're scouting around and looking in other people's
trolleys noted um not judging just having a little look what have you got there um well
I wouldn't have made that choice um the um yeah sorry less of that but um is there any like certain
ones aside from all UPS is there certain ones that like are real red flags for you or ones that
you like oh if i see that i just avoid it kind of thing yeah i think it's the all of them it is it
is it's kind of one of all of them the one i actually i think the one out of all of them at
the moment is the processed meats um because of the risk um you know the world health organization
um have listed things like ham and other meat products as like a a grade i think grade one or
the highest grade of carcinogenic level.
So that really worries me.
And the fact that we still give our children ham sandwiches is,
to me, just is really worrying.
So I ban.
Is that the?
Yeah, we've got the nitrate side of things,
but it's kind of the impact on the bowel and how these processed,
So processed meats can really increase your risk of bowel cancer.
And it's linked with that very strongly.
And also the fact that the World Health Organization and we know that these meats do put that, you know, they're just a carcinogen.
You know, you'd be better to something else that you could eat is probably much healthier.
So probably even processed cereals are probably a better choice than like your processed meats if you had to pick out.
so i don't i don't cringe so much when people put cereals in their in their in their supermarket
trolley but when i see packets of bacon and ham and and it's not it doesn't seem that people eat it
in um moderation it's when you also go to pubs and places like that that you know you're getting
served burgers and it's just loaded with all the all the other kind of processed meats that that
worries me yeah i mean okay okay back in the day so because i so i i used to be a butcher
Haley back in a few years ago. So, and we used to make our own hams and bacon and stuff.
I actually won a, um, a, a buttery award for our, um, our smoked ham. Anyway, got a gold
star. Anyway, and I guess it's kind of, it, cause cause obviously, you know, from my point
of view and that's why I wanted to ask like, which ones trigger? Cause I, cause I, you know,
I probably have other ones that trigger me and then maybe, maybe bacon doesn't like, I
mean, I happen to love bacon and I probably eat too much of it, but I would always, I guess
For me, I would always try and buy bacon from a butcher that makes it themselves.
Now, obviously, I know it's got salt in it because you have to have salt
and it'll probably have some kind of nitrate in it because if it stays pink,
whereas if you don't put the nitrates in it, it doesn't stay pink.
But most bacon that you see out there tends to have nitrate in it
for keeping that pink color.
But I guess, you know, in my mind, I would see that as like,
well, if it's been dry cured and then it's been hung and it's been sliced,
that's come from a good pig, that's probably better.
Or in my mind, I wouldn't be thinking about getting bowel cancer.
But totally, if I saw, you know, if I was picking up, you know,
cheap Danish bacon, you know, that's been wet cured and it's, you know,
it's just been, I don't know, like it's come from a pig that's been barn read
or, you know, whatever.
It's not had, you know, a good diet itself.
I don't know, but maybe that's just coke.
I don't know.
I agree.
Would you kind of see all bacon as being a bad or?
No, so I'm like you, Henry.
So I'm talking more about the very cheap meats that you find classically in the supermarket.
So those kind of like wafer thin ham pieces that just don't resemble ham in any sense.
So, you know, as much as I'm sort of health conscious, I'm not perfect.
So if...
Who is?
But you try your hardest.
And I think, and I always kind of relate it to the good old days, you know, like a grandma,
you know, a 90 year old that's alive today.
you know they they would go to the butchers and they'd get decent quality ham and i think if you're
going to eat ham that's exactly what i would do because like you've got you know it's where you
source that from so if my daughter wanted a ham sandwich you know i i'd say well look we're just
not going to go to the supermarket and get it because it's ridiculously bad for you but i would
say let's go and try and get the the best ham we can get from the butcher so i'm not against that
in any sense. It's that really, it's that really awkward, the stuff that, you know,
you cringe at too, Henry. Not your award-winning half.
The cheapest stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The stuff that comes in a square, you know,
and it's all nicely sliced up. You know that, you know, yes, it's pork and it's got salt in it,
but it's probably got a load of other ingredients. And there'll also be a whole load of non-declarable
ingredients as well, because they're classified as processing aids. So if you can read, you know,
10 ingredients, there's probably another
8 or 9 that have been added that you don't
even know about and they'll be kind of
enzyme based ingredients that will do something
but they'll vanish
during the processing part of the
curing or the boiling
whatever it is and then
they do it out to declare it but there's no
and there's almost no way of you checking
as a consumer whether it's in there
like the only way you find out is if you
became a big buyer of
that ham from the factory
and then you could ask them for their
in detailed spec sheets that would then have all of the non-declarable stuff on.
But they wouldn't give that to you as a customer.
Like you'd have to be buying tons and tons and have a, you know, a multi-year contract.
And so you just don't know.
So I guess you're probably right.
The best thing to do is just don't eat it because if you can't,
you've got no way of verifying all the stuff that's in it.
Just don't eat it.
It's probably the easiest thing.
I was just going to say, so if you go to like a butcher,
so someone like me, Henry, then who doesn't have to buy meat in as a butcher
and has to cut it up so if I if um you know as a as a as a normal regular mum um wanting to go and
get if you know someone is going to be a little bit very tiny in very small amounts if you did
want to buy it is all ham very much the same when you go to butchers or is it is it very variable
in terms of what you could be getting is is variable I mean depends on the butcher but a lot
A lot of them will buy the ham in, so it's probably then made in a fairly big factory somewhere.
You know, near us, near Bristol, there's a big meat processing plant.
And if you live nearby it and the wind blows in the wrong direction, it smells pretty bad.
Thankfully, I don't live next to it.
But they process, I think, about 7,000 pigs a day.
And they're making for, you know, Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsbury's, M&S.
You know, they're making for all of these different supermarkets.
but they'll also be producing for you know trade accounts so for for butchers and wholesale butchers
etc and um so actually you know even if you go to your butcher and you see that you know nice ham
ready to be sliced it might be the same ham that ends up in wait waitrose but it just hasn't been
sliced and put in a packet so actually it's gone through the same thing so i think for me it's about
building up a relationship and building up trust so you know if you if you've got a local butcher
that you can chat to and then oh yeah we cure it ourselves well if you're interested you'd be like
well what are you curing it in like you know and this is this is a lot of effort just to find out
how your bacon's made you know and actually you probably get to the point where you're like well
I'll just make my own bacon because you know if you're making it yourself you don't need to put
nitrates in because you're not worried about it looking gray when it cooks because it's only you
eating it not you're not trying to sell it to a consumer and that's probably how you know most
most bacon would have been consumed. People would have had a, I don't know, a village pig,
and then they would have cured it, and then they would have eaten it. That was kind of like the
old way, but that's not the world that we live in at the moment. But I mean, that's extreme. I'm not
suggesting that we all need to have a pig in the back garden and start curing our own. If I find
myself retiring, I would quite like to have a couple of pigs and, you know, do a bit curing.
But then that's a more organic way of doing it, isn't it? So then, to me, that's like,
If you're going to have, like, I would almost love to have lived in the olden days when they did do it like that.
Because I think, like, I can't, you just imagine the taste and the flavor, can't you?
That it's just dumb.
So, yeah, so if someone did that and they would live down the road, that's when I would eat a little bit of that.
Yeah, fine, fine, fine.
But yeah, it's the stuff that is not resembling any kind of meat in any form, which is my thing.
No.
Yeah, yeah, I don't like.
I like the rule
if you can't pronounce it
it's probably
and I don't mean that for like
you know foreign food
obviously there's lots of Greek dishes
that I can't pronounce
but I'd still eat them
because they're delicious
but you know if you're reading a label
and it's got some long word
and you're like
I guess it's when you look at
like face cream or shampoo
like half the ingredients
you're like I can't pronounce that
because it's just
it's lychotin or something
and when you see those names
in your food
and you're like
I think that's probably something to avoid.
But it is tricky.
I think ones that trigger me or I'm kind of hyper aware of.
So for me, one of them is kind of veg oils sneaked in.
Now, obviously, veg oils are in absolutely everything, whether that's erypsid oil or sunflower oil.
I did that sad thing of finding out how they made it.
Now, not the kind of cold pressed stuff that you get, you know, from your local farmer's market, whatever.
The kind of the cheaper vegetable oils.
and actually when you see how they're made
it's a pretty grisly looking
process, a lot of kind of
chemical extraction and then
lots of kind of oxidisation
and then they flavour it or they
remove the flavour because it's so bitter and
disgusting and so there's a lot of processing
to get to this kind of cheap
fuel and then it's quite often sold
with a nice little healthy heart
on it or kind of lowering
saturated fat, so whatever that might be
and that sounds like a good thing
and that
For me, it's something that I try and avoid and not eat.
But when you start checking ingredients, it's in absolutely everything.
And the bit that I really hate is when, I don't know, for example,
I picked up some tin mackerel the other day and it said in extra virgin olive oil.
I was like, great.
So I picked it up.
Now, that was written nice and big and bold on the front from a reputable brand.
And then I flipped it around and it was 10% extra virgin olive oil, 90% sunflower oil.
and so you you you just have to double check and i was like actually i don't want that so then i
bought the one that was in spring water and then added my own olive oil on top and um and all things
like pestos you know like the kids quite often like you know pasta pesto actually they've grown
out of that but we definitely went through a stage of you know it was kind of an easy supper
and um you know sometimes we'd make it ourselves but occasionally you know you're caught short and
you're like i'm just going to grab a jar and and then you read the ingredients and you're like well
it's got you know three percent extra virgin olive oil and then the rest of it is bulked out
with this cheaper well some people on internet would call it industrial sludge anyway that's
maybe a bit um inflammatory but but like it is again it's back to that analogy of like how can
we make this pesto and how can we keep it affordable olive oil is very expensive therefore
we need to substitute it with a cheaper ingredient but still put a little bit of olive oil in so then
we can name it and it's just that kind of slow degradation of the quality of the ingredients
going in and i guess you know fats are an expensive product you know butter's expensive
coconut oil's expensive extra virgin olive oil's expensive so if you're trying to like recreate
those products then you know sunflower rolls incredibly cheap you know um rapeseed oil grows
all over the uk you know it's it's a it's a it's a cheap commodity and therefore you can make cheap
fat and you know so if you can market that as um as being good for you and as a kind of like oh
it's healthier than butter kind of thing,
then, you know, us as the
consumers, we're like, well, who do you trust?
You know, you just got to like, you try and, you know,
I try not to be
cynical, but you only have
to kind of look around, but also how
it makes you feel. Like, I know that if I
eat a load of chips down at the
fish and chip shop,
I feel dreadful afterwards.
And you're like, but when I cook them at home,
and if I'm cooking chips at home,
I'll either do them in, I quite often
do them in coconut oil or
beef tallow all dripping, you know, and I don't feel awful. I'm like, well, it's the same potato,
you know, they've been deep fried by all accounts. But why does the one that's been deep fried in
vegetable make me feel awful and kind of greasy, whereas, you know, the one cooked in a kind of
a more natural fat doesn't. And so I guess I just benchmark it on that. But that for me has become
a bit of a kind of a red flag when I see it. And it's in all products and it's, you know, it's in,
you know, you know, crisp biscuits, you know, any kind of sandwich, mayonnaise.
So like, I can't even buy sandwiches now because pretty much every sandwich has got, you know,
a little slicker mayonnaise in it.
And then it's like, there you go, veg oil.
And obviously mayonnaise is made up of veg oil Do you feel the same about I remember when there was a big push for rapeseed oil and it was like you got to have rapeseed oil and don I forget what they were trying
to tell you. I was part of that. When me and my brother were doing our TV show, this is
Britain's answer to water oil. We were big champions in it because it was like, it's
cheaper, it's got more flavour. Granted, we were talking more about the cold press stuff,
not the kind of, you know, vegetable oil stuff.
But I still, you know, I still, I just have olive oil now, personally.
Yeah.
So what is it that, because I can see you're really passionate about the oils there, Henry.
It's really good to see.
So what is it about the vegetable oil?
Because this is probably where my knowledge is a bit more limited.
So my understanding is that you should always try and have olive oil,
the best olive oil you can have.
Yeah.
even if you have that one save that one for salads and um you know like you say you kind of
dips or whatever you're making or using it for then if you're cooking if you can't afford to
keep that with the um sort of high quality extra virgin olive oil to use um a basic olive oil if
that's what you're cooking with but yeah like a pommage oil or something yeah yeah i can see that
the vegetable oil what is it about do you know what it is about well i think yeah well i think
Well, I think probably initially I probably saw it on the internet, someone flagged up like, do you know how they make, you know, one of those kind of like shock clickbaity, you know, shock horror things and there's a little video and then you watch, you know, oh God, that doesn't look great.
And then I just started doing a bit of kind of research about it.
And the, first of all, it's not an ingredient that we've eaten for a long time.
So actually it's a fairly modern part of a modern fact for our diet.
So, you know, for thousands of years, we've been eating, you know, animal fats or coconut fat or olive oil or, you know, butter, etc.
But actually extracting a neutral oil out of a vegetable seed is actually quite difficult.
It was initially created out of the kind of during the Industrial Revolution as a kind of an engine lubricant.
So essentially it's engine oil.
And so and then obviously during the First World War, I believe production was ramped up because we had, you know,
were building all the tanks and the planes and all the, you know, all the stuff we needed.
So they needed more engine lubricants. So then they started, you know, farming more of it.
And then post the world wars, you had this, particularly in America, you had a flux of,
you know, young men who had been at war and now they needed work. And so they, they turned the
tank factories into tractors, you know, because that was a good thing to do. And then they started
farming, you know, farming became a really big part of that kind of get America working again.
And that makes sense. Like, I'm sure if I was, you know, in charge and you had thousands of men coming back looking for work, get them farming. You know, that was like an obvious thing to do. And, you know, wars are great for, wars aren't great, but wars are great for like progressing technology. So, you know, that kind of necessity to innovate becomes really real.
and so suddenly you had you know a nation coming back they needed food they needed work
and so it was like well so a lot of farming then became subsidized
so this is a bit of a potted history but part of it was growing you know kind of corn and wheat and
and um and uh and these you know uh seed oils essentially so like whether that's cotton oil or
um sunflower or rapeseed you know and they you know so out of it corn you've got the high fructose
corn syrup, you know, that, you know, if you look in, I guess it's less in the UK, but when you go
to America and you read nothing has sugar and it's all just high fructose corn syrup, you know,
that's their kind of cheap alternative because I guess they can grow a lot of corn out there
because it's hotter. And then these oils that are produced in a factory, they have to go through
lots of kind of treatment to, you know, lots of different chemicals are added, et cetera. And,
And, you know, you then get this all out that's very stable and it kind of seems to work quite well.
But also it was very cheap and plentiful.
So then when you're, you know, and now around about this time, industrial food's starting to kind of take off.
And we're all getting kind of quite smart about, you know, being clever with, you know, whether that's making, I don't know, Magnum ice creams or, you know, McDonald's or Snickers or whatever, you know, whatever the, you know, all these products are suddenly appearing in this kind of post-war boom.
and, you know, this fat is right at the heart.
And, you know, I'm not saying it's the only culprit,
but I guess you kind of look around, you're like,
well, this ingredient didn't exist.
And now suddenly, you know, you see all the stats
of people with, you know, diabetes or, you know,
inflammatory diseases or heart, you know,
coronary disease, you know, and probably loads of stuff
that you see.
And also just looking around, like, you know,
being an observer of society, you know,
not in a judgmental way, but just like, you know.
And then also in our bakery, you know,
loads of breads have fats in them and well, you know, using British rapes in oil is like,
wow, that's a good thing to do because it's got, you know, and, you know, I was totally bought into
that narrative and then, so I've been on a bit of a mission of kind of removing it from our bakery.
So it's, you know, these things take time, you know, it's complicated and, you know,
and replacing it with, you know, and this is, I guess, is where the tricky part is, is that,
you know you need fat in your diet and i think i read a stat somewhere a few years ago that like
i think it's like over 80 percent of the fats consumed in human diets around the world are
coming from these seed oils so they're not you know so to suddenly say like get rid of them well
there's gonna be a problem because people still need fat in their diet you know and um and if you
can't suddenly replace it with a more natural alternative that's utopian so like i don't have
a solution for that but i guess from a personal point of view i just try and avoid them i'm just
like well that that's something that i can control and um so it does mean i don't eat crisps but um
uh to be honest it's fine you get you get over it eventually yeah i don't we don't eat crisps but
then i would i would i would be less triggered by like the nitrate thing so i'm always interested
here like what triggers other people because that probably i probably do look i quite like
tritzo and uh um like if i'm if i'm trapped okay so doing a bit of driving down the motorway and
I'll be honest here if I stop off and I you know I need to get some fuel and I need to go to Llewyn
and I'm a bit hungry because I've you know been on the road for ages you know the coffin there's
like an M&S or a Waitrose and so I'll kind of have a little look around and I'll be like what's
it's probably rubbish it's probably got loads of stuff in it and I might buy some fruit but I'm
quite partial to those um like um little cigarillo things it's like chorizo with a bit of cheese and
it's all rolled up okay but but probably like if you read the back of that you know and I know that
it's like it's processed meat and it's cheap cheese and i would look at that and be like well
it's only a few nitrates i haven't got any seed oils in it i think but um i'll try harder next
time yeah i'm sure like doing it just very very rarely but um but you know there's some something
like there i think your risk is to all these health conditions are increased just even if
your diet is made up of about 10% of ultra processed food so we're not even talking about
90 to 100% we're talking about even if you have if your diet across what you eat if 10% of it is
it still increases your increases your risk significantly so that that's quite that's quite
scary isn't it because you think it'd be more of a heavy consumption um but it it's actually like a
sliding and incremental scale you know if you're going to even step onto that ladder you're still
putting your body at risk and your health at risk.
Yeah, I didn't know it was that low.
I would have guessed maybe like 30% or something, but yeah, 10%.
And, you know, if you kind of toss up what you actually eat in a day,
that might be that one muffin that you picked up from, you know,
a coffee chain that you just ate.
You know, it doesn't have to be that much, does it?
Because 10%, you know, it's probably half the muffin.
Yeah, it is, isn't it?
Yeah.
know yeah so you kind of have to be to like avoid these things you have to be basically a saint and
cook everything from scratch yeah and then make those and take them with you which we do actually
try and do that like um we try and make stuff and freeze it and then you know and then defrost it
and then you know and that's where if we are going to have a cake i'll have it as a homemade cake um
and just sort of try and choose recipes carefully where you try and reduce the amount of sugar within
the recipes or try and use more natural sauces or fruit and things like that and um you know
there's ways of doing it isn't there like um somebody once said you could crush a banana
into oats and make that as your sweet crumble top rather than like using sugar yeah yeah and i just
thought that's a really lovely kind of way of doing yeah quite quite good way of doing it yeah
totally totally yeah i think and i think i guess you know if you're cooking from scratch it's fairly
easy to avoid these
products.
Probably the place where you want to be careful is if you
like adding your
srirachas or your
different Asian sauces and stuff because quite often
you've made a lovely stir fry
and you've got fresh produce and you're cooking
it and you've chopped it all on and now you're
making it, adding a bit of
flavour and actually that's probably where you need to be
a bit careful because they're just
those kind of default ones.
I really like
I don't eat it all the time but like
lean pairings for example you know i'd be like that's quite tasty but actually probably
you know i mean it probably is a upf to a certain extent you know if you look at the ingredients
there'll probably be stabilizers or you know something in there that keeps it going i don't
know i have to check yeah i think tabasco is fairly clean label i think you've told me on a
previous episode not to use the lean pairings actually in me so um i'm sorry no i think i
remember you saying because i think i said yeah i think it was like when we were talking about
spaghetti bolognese or something or we've had this conversation and um and you said oh yeah no i think
i think i was meaning more from a kind of an authentic point of view but it's fine you usually
in parents yeah yeah because i mean what else could you could could you use so i mean so so
looking at healthier choices then so in terms of what should we be filling our pantries cupboards
everything with in terms of what what would you say are good products to use and here in real i
assume olive oils on the top of your list yeah yeah so for so for for cooking yeah olive oil
coconut oil and i'd always try and buy organic if i can and i know that like that then does push
the price up but i i always think that you know um um knowing how farming works and i've been to
quite you know i grew up on a farm i went to quite a lot of farms and when you you know when you know
the chemicals that they're spraying onto those crops it ain't great quite a lot of them have got
the word side in which is latin for death so uh you know you want you want you so if you if you
can afford organic go organic and actually i think organic um uh coconut oil is not that expensive
you can kind of buy in like a kind of kilo tub it does make everything taste a little bit coconutty
um but if you're making like a curry or an asian food then it's probably fine i probably wouldn't
roast my roast potatoes for christmas dinner and coconut fat because it'll give them a slightly kind
of tropical vibe but um and then for kind of like seasons and stuff i mean salt i would always try
and use um like a sea salt but like a crystal one i actually went to a talk from um the cornish sea
salt and they were um they're a salt that we use in the bakery but they make a really beautiful
beautiful salt and they were saying within within their salt they've got 82 different minerals so
they've had it like all fully tested and because it's coming from an incredibly clear and clean
part of the Cornish coast. And then, yeah, so actually, so they were saying like, you know,
if you're, if you're doing lots of exercise and you get cramp, you can buy these really like kind
of electrolyte discs that you put in and they tend to be like raspberry flavor and stuff.
You read those ingredients full of crap. So he was saying, actually, you could just use,
have salty water with our salt because it's got lots of minerals in. If you want, you can put a
bit of, you know, a squeeze of lemon or something just to kind of make it taste a bit nicer.
but actually so a good quality salt so no table salt no rock salt no kind of you know you you want
it to be a nice natural sea salt and uh for me the cornish salt is a great one there's good ones up in
um up in wales obviously there's molden which is very famous though actually molden only has 42
i think was it 38 or 42 minerals because it comes from an estuary so it doesn't have quite the same
kind of profile so anyway cornish he was saying it's quite good if you've got like mouth ulcers
you can kind of rub the salt in and it helps like reduce the inflammation anyway and like clears it
up so yeah good quality salt then things like spices so you know if you're making curries or
stir fries or you know you know you want a bit of flavor just buying like whole spices and grinding
yourself again try and buy good quality ones um but at least then you know what you're getting um
i mean i'm yeah my kids do quite like a bit of asian food because we probably do have like um
Yeah, kind of soy sauces and mirin and vinegars and stuff.
I don't know.
So maybe some of them might be, you might have to, you know, question.
But I guess really bring a little bit in.
But things like, you know, like a good organic apple cider vinegar.
Great.
You know, it's like a lot of it's British made.
It's fairly cheap.
You can buy it in most supermarkets, even like Aldi and Niddle sell organic apple cider vinegar.
It's great for your gut.
You know, it really brings things alive.
So actually, you know, if you're just trying to, you know, you made a soup or a stew.
something that just needs a bit of a bit of lifting a little splash of vinaigran really helps
and uh you know so that's that good so so actually you know like salt salt and um acid
and then all you need that now is a is something to heat it um and a good frying pan or a good oven
or a good barbecue and actually you can make something quite delicious that's probably like
the absolute bare essential though i also am partial to mustard so i'm a bit of a diesel mustard
fan i don't know whether that counts as a upf but um i just try and buy a good quality one
i think again yeah exactly i think it's where you source it from isn't it if you if you turn it
around and it's got eight eight other ingredients then you might want to think again but if you turn
one around it's a hundred percent you know i think you're looking at percentages and the quantities
of what else and what other ingredients are in are in with the product um no no um you know product going to be exactly the same is it so it just trying to carefully select yeah i think it i guess having been
like so i've been to america a few times and it is and it it i kind of go into the supermarket it's
a bit of a voyeur just to like have a look at the ingredients and you kind of there's you know
there's like similar brands that you kind of recognize and then you you know so you like pick
up a you know i don't know a ketchup and you kind of i know the uk one's kind of got it's got some
stabilizers and it's got some xanthan gum it's got you know a few bits in there just to kind of
stop it splitting but then you look at the american one and it's got you know 20 ingredients and you're
like whoa and and so i think i think in the uk we are quite lucky that a lot of our a lot there are
a lot of upfs in the foods but we're not like inundated like you can still you know you probably
can still buy dijon mustard that is just mustard seeds vinegar salt and maybe i don't know there
might be a processing area or something but it's not like horrendous whereas you know yeah if you
pick up an american mustard it would you know like just it's like a a packet of toothpaste you know
the amount of ingredients in it and so i think they've probably got a bit of a harder which is
probably why this whole kind of upf thing is really being flagged up by people in america
because they're just that much further on the kind of,
they've buggered around with their food way more.
They're trying to make it cheaper and smarter and bigger
and all that kind of stuff.
And actually, so hopefully we can learn from them
and not go that way.
I think that thing that you nailed about price,
trying to keep costs down.
If we're trying to, manufacturers and producers
are going to continue to produce food
and try and keep it affordable,
even if they're lovely people and have got great intentions.
I think they'll naturally just end up degrading the quality of the ingredients.
Yeah, that is pretty sad.
And particularly when you see the impact it has on people.
I mean, I know for me, if I eat a pizza from an unreptable takeaway place,
I will feel awful for, you know, it really throws me.
And I just think, and I don't want to start in a judgment way,
but if that's what you're eating all the time,
no wonder people are feeling dreadful.
Yeah, I can't eat those pizzas that you've just mentioned because as a student when I was studying, I remember having a piece and it just made my heart race.
And I'm a bit like MSG, so my body almost rejects anything where it's just like, what on earth is that?
So I can tell what kind of awful preservatives or MSG or whatever's been added to it to try and give it flavor or an enhancer or whatever it's supposed to be trying to do.
Because, yeah, it's just horrible.
And you can, and it's salty and you just get that real desire to, you cannot drink enough water to kind of quench your thirst.
like um i don't know if you've ever had that but um you know if you ever do have a piece of that
sort of type of pizza you sometimes think gosh oh yeah i quench my thirst and i just think what is
that doing to my brain no totally and also a lot of these you know we talked about um at the very
beginning about you know these things were the course that you went on the way it was about
making things crunchy or making things you know soft or you know that kind of the aroma you know
most of it is designed to make you eat more.
You know, they want you to like, you know, once you pop, you can't stop.
You know, that, that, that, you know,
they're telling you exactly what they're trying to make it, make you do.
And, um, and whereas, whereas like real food,
really hard to like overindulge.
Like if you, if you made your own vegetable crisps, you know,
you would find it really hard to like eat packets and packets and just kind of
keep nailing it because it's, it's, um, uh,
you know, like properly cooked food is, you know, it's not, I don't think it's addictive.
No, no.
I think you eat until you have that, what's that word? Is it satiety?
Yeah.
So like fullness.
But like that feeling of like feeling full, you just never get that. You know, if you go eat at McDonald's,
you just don't ever feel full. You're always like, I'm kind of still hungry. Whereas if you eat like a,
you know, a proper, you know, a burger from good meat, you know, it's been grilled nicely. It's, you know,
It's got, you know, nice tomatoes in it, nice lettuce, you know, nice sauces, a good bun from a good bakery.
You know, you'll feel full.
Like, you'll be like, I don't need to eat anymore because it's like it's real food going in.
And you probably can make burgers healthy as well, can't you, Henry?
Because you've probably made like burgers and you can actually probably turn something that would otherwise be deemed as, you know, a burger.
It's got to be unhealthy.
So actually you could make that a healthy vegetable burger and then, like, say, have all your salad and lovely bits in it, like your onion and all that.
side of things and it ends up not being as bad for you as as you as you think yeah but you mentioned
um yeah so so just a moment ago you mentioned you could perhaps make some vegetable crisps
do you do you make them and how how do you make those henry do you do you do it in a particular
way well i've made them a few times i i can't promise to say that i make uh vegetable crisps
all the time the easiest way to do it so you you're kind of like frying them if you want to
like recreate a crisp you need to then um i mean you get the potatoes but like beetroot works
really well or like parsnips or any kind of like root vegetable carrots you then want to yeah
slice them really thinly on a mandolin you can do it with a knife but like to get that really kind
of like waffle thin is gonna be quite tricky um and you can even get mandolins have like little
crinkle cuts so you can get like you know you're kind of um the real mccoy looking shape and um
now if you if you were if you wanted to make them like super crispy you would then um you'd make a
nice kind of mix of probably like potato starches and you would coat them in it so then when they
crisp that bit really fries up and gets crispy and then they don't go soggy you probably don't
want to do that because you're probably not gonna have potato starch knocking around your house
um so then you i mean probably the best way to do is just to bake them so just a decent amount
of olive oil or some kind of natural fat and then season them you could put some you know some
paprika on there you could put some spices whatever you fancy you know some garlic some
rosemary toss them around and then kind of bacon in the oven they're not going to be as you know um
well if you if you're having like a nice drinks party and you're like you want to have some crisps
and you don't want to just open up a bag of you know salt and vinegar and stick them in a bowl
you could do this and they would kind of look a bit kind of funky they're going to be a bit
different to you know they're not going to have that same kind of crisp crispy crunch because
actually recreating that.
And I think recreating ultra-processed food
is really difficult to do that at home.
And so actually it's probably just not worth trying.
Imagine why the popcorn one's quite a good one
because that is quite easy to cook some popcorn
and some coconut fat and then just mix it
with either a little bit of sugar
or a little bit of maple syrup or a bit of honey
or do a savory one.
And actually people aren't going to judge you so much
because it's not like you're not trying to recreate walkers.
yeah no yeah and i think that's it we've been fooled haven't we but
yeah having those ultra processed foods around us so much that like you say it's so difficult to
create because we're not a laboratory at home you know we can't do that right that's interesting
so if you do do that so you'd have to probably cook them for quite a while if you're going to
try and do a vegetable crisp and like you say probably best just to chop the news a night
but you tell me what yeah i've never tried in an air fryer and you might find you could if you've
got an air fryer i haven't got one but i i reckon you because because you've got so much air flowing
around you could probably make quite a good vegetable crisp in an air fryer yeah that it
does say you can do that if anyone's got one give it a go just put a little bit of oil on it nice
bit of seasoning and then stick them in the basket and kind of plump them up so there's plenty of
and you might have to give them a bit of a shake you know halfway through just to kind of make sure
that all the sides are getting crisped up but you might find that actually the air fryer works pretty
well yeah or you're gonna have to get your deep fat fryer out yeah because i think that on the
air fryer there's the dehydrate and the air fryer function isn't there so it's okay the dehydrate
would work better would it or the no no you want you won't want to do the dehydrate you'll end up
with kind of uh they'll be kind of like chewy so dehydrate would be great for things like like
apple rings you know like slices of mango brilliant you know because then you're going
to get that nice kind of like intense chewy because it's going to remove all the moisture
but keep all the sugars and that nice kind of flavour in.
But for a piece of potato, I don't think dehydrated potato,
none of your guests will come back or they'll bring their own packet of crisps.
Good, that's funny.
Yeah, see, that's why I don't cook.
I like that.
Yeah.
That's why I'm not the pro.
You can try things, Hayley.
God loves a try.
Yeah, well, the thing is, I sort of love-hate the air fryer.
My concern with the air fryer, I mean, I love the convenience
and I think it's great if you can do things exactly what we've just said.
If you can create a vegetable crisp, it's really healthy.
My concern is the coating on air fryers and how healthy that is.
And I know that's a topic for another day, but that's my only thing.
So I'm a bit on the fence with the air fryers at the moment.
I still have a love-hate relationship with it.
Not to go off topic, but the problem you find,
and I've definitely had conversation with my wife,
is that where you start finding out about something
And whether that's, you know, a coating on a pan or an ingredient in a packet of crisper and a cake or, you know, a coating on a waterproof coat or a chemical soaked as a fire retardant in your mattress.
You know, the whole world is like stacked against us because we've like we've got all these incredible, amazing things that like do all these wonderful stuff.
But they're not natural and they're probably not great for you.
to to to limit down to zero you're gonna have to live as a hermit in the middle of nowhere but
sadly it'll be quite a lonely experience and obviously we'll suit certain people but probably
you know we you know we live in this world and we have to be like part of this world so
i guess i don't know for me it's about um i guess it's about trying to like pick your battles and
like and um and maybe not even maybe if i need battles just like pick some like red lines be
like right i'm just gonna try not to cross this and um and so i think particularly with the with
the upf probably the easiest thing you could do is just you know if you're if you're overly reliant
on like takeaways or eating out or you know or like pre-made stuff just try and like reduce that
down so if you're having a takeaway twice a week you know go to once a fortnight you know and try
and just like cook more from scratch because that's gonna be the easiest way to like reduce
stuff down obviously you know once you get into it you're like well you know say like a vegetable
and you've got an organic one and a non-organic one well you know you could have you could now be
cooking from scratch but now your non-organic one's covered in herbicides and pesticides and
all sorts of sprays that are really not good for you and there's no way of finding out what they've
put on because that happened in the farmer's field and you know unless you've got access to
the farmer you've got no idea so suddenly you know you can just go deeper and deeper and i think
those levels and i think for me it's about like it's not about trying to scare everybody to be
like we're all going to live like hermits or but actually we could we can make we can make decisions
that that can you know maybe improve and try and reduce our kind of the amount of of these kind of
weird ingredients that aren't natural going into our diet and uh and i do i often hope that like
you know someone in like 5 000 years will like look back and they'll see like you know right
back from the Egyptians and, you know, kind of log what people are eating, what people are doing.
And there'll be this little kind of blip, you know, in the kind of 21st century where we all
got a bit clever about, you know, what we could do with food. And actually, and then we'll go back
and be like, that was stupid. We, you know, we didn't make people healthier or happier. We made
people sick. And let's not do that again. Anyway, that's like my hope. Obviously, we're currently
living in that moment. And so we just have to do the best we can. Exactly. And I think you said
that really nicely henry and i think with um with the sort of season upon us in terms of christmas
and new year and people thinking about possibly like what changes they might want to make for their
health for 2026 consistency is key and like you said just trying to reduce some of the consumption
is is going any any change is a good change so if there's somebody listening could actually make
a reduction it's going to significantly improve their health and and that's when it's really worth
it and sometimes it's just knowing isn't it sort of little tips which is why we wanted to do
these episodes because it's about those small little healthy bit um small chunks that we can do
um that can make a big impact so not always going like you say into complete extremism of um
living extra healthy and whatever i mean we both probably in our own fields do do things to the max
because that's what we know and that's what we enjoy and we're passionate about yeah in terms of
Just generally, anyone listening, just trying to make some healthier choices.
Hopefully what we've discussed today might just help people make better decisions
and then their health will improve as a result.
I think that's all we can do because it is tough out there to make good choices all of the time.
And I think it's interesting because when we get to talk about some of the kind of lifestyle changes and habits
and also with setting New Year's resolutions and things like that,
people often will fall down after about four weeks because they just completely set themselves
at too big a challenge and it's not realistic so really challenging yeah so i think it's just
trying to do consistent change isn't it so yeah yeah absolutely well this this it's been great
great to talk about this and i think if this to me feels like a series like there's so much to
talk about i mean we've just talked about essentially processed meat and and vegetable
oils and actually you know that this is a vast and deep subject anyway maybe maybe it's something
that we'll have to come back to again and uh and tackle some of the other other sides of it but um
but yeah it's uh it's it's great hearing your perspective and um and uh yeah thank you for
sharing yeah thank you henry i think everyone's learned lots from what you've said as well so um
yeah lovely to chat as always and um i like you say i think we better cover more of that in future
your episodes so yeah thanks very much henry thank you yeah cheers hailey