[Closed] The benefits of not eating processed food.

Do you think? It's in grams - plus it tells you the whole amount - for example I like a bit of Dolmio Sauce there's 30g of Sugar in a Jar of Dolmio which is quite a lot I suppose and someone who's "not into processed food" might gasp and say "those sneaky bastards" as if the Dolmio puppets poured a handful of it into each jar, but in reality the main ingredient in Dolmio is Tomatoes, which as any internet pendant will tell you is a fruit and fruit contains sugar if you were to spend the time to make your own - oh so healthy tomato sauce and used 6 tomatoes you would also have 30g of sugar in your sauce.

So you're saying that Dolmio has 30g added sugar as well as

So you're saying that Dolmio has 30g added sugar as well as

I think that's precisely what he's not saying.

[i]I think that's precisely what he's not saying.[/i]

+1

Did someone say Dolmio... time for...

Possible NSFW content.

Well said OP. I do all I can to avoid "ready made" and also highly processed foods inc sugar. Much better for it.

Re sugar/salt - ready made foods have huge amounts of this added to them. Far more than you would ever do if you made it yourself. I don't agree with the point above that you are blind eating basic / self made foods vs packaged. its very easy to work out the fat/calory/sugar content of natural products.

Re sugar/salt - ready made foods have huge amounts of this added to them

Nor all of them. Generally (but not solely) the cheap and nasty ones.

Cheers jambalaya, i'm not trying to lose weight, in fact i'm consuming about 50% more food now as there are no empty calories, we don't add salt as our taste buds have recovered from the onslaught and food is tasty without it.

i'm not trying to lose weight, in fact i'm consuming about 50% more food now as there are no empty calories,

While I agree with the idea of cooking from scratch as much as possible, I don't think that ^^ makes much sense.

Went off overly processed stuff years ago, but mainly because I got to like cooking and kept seeing stuff that I thought I could do myself, and turns out it's much better tasting from fresh-ish ingredients and satisfying.

Still most things are processed in some way, but it's the processed meat that's basically reconstituted sludge scraped off the floor of the slaughter house and then stuffed with chemicals to make it taste okay that are best to be avoided. Just because it's shite.

Stuff I make isn't really healthy though, mainly because I make huge portions and scoff it all myself, especially after bike rides, plus add booze on top. Also tends to be a lot of pasta based stuff. Or curry. Nice though 😀

And Dolmio - whether a tin of tomatoes has the same sugar or not, it's just plain lazy. Do it yourself, takes no time at all, far cheaper, and can make it taste better. Simple level of cooking. It's what you learn as a student to do spag bol 😉 . Well, it's what students used to learn when they really were poor and didn't have a fortune in loans to spend so were forced to learn to cook.

Oh and Aunt f'in Bessies and her lazy-ass expensive cardboard yorkshires! Makes my blood boil that stuff. They don't even taste nice.

lemonysam - Member
Shouldn't fry in olive oil

Bollocks

Fry your bollocks?

Jars of sauces such as dolmio are just rank. Fair enough, if you are so pushed for time, I suppose it is better than a ready meal lasagne, but not a patch on what you can make with little extra effort or cost.

Try to cook from ingredients that don't have an ingredient list. It's practically impossible to do so 100%, but pretty easy in the case of dolmio.

But lets face it, even basics such as flour and salt have added ingredients. The supermarket started selling English apples this month. What have they been treated with to keep them fresh for the last 4 months? The way some stuff just shrivels rather than rots is not natural.

The food industry prey on peoples reluctance to pay for quality with either their cash or their time, and use this to make as much cash out of us as possible.

edit: [url= http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/21/a-feast-of-engineering-whats-really-in-your-food ]an interesting article on this from the other day[/url]

What have they been treated with to keep them fresh for the last 4 months?

My neighbours still have apples from last year - untreated and off their tree. Undamaged apples will keep for ages in the right environment.

edit: In their case a beaten up filing cabinet in the shed. Does that count as high tech?

My neighbours still have apples from last year - untreated and off their tree. Undamaged apples will keep for ages in the right environment.

accepted - maybe that is all there is to it - but it's not what I would do if I was a major supplier and wanted higher confidence on preservation. I also find it interesting that the same supermarket does not sell English apples in Oct+Nov. I guess I am just a cynical old git but I just don't trust the food industry.

I've never understood things like Dolmio - it's basically saving you the time it takes to chop and fry an onion and some garlic, then chuck in some dried herbs?

I was going to link to that Guardian article, but llama got there first. Instead, here's [url= http://wholelarderlove.com/thats-a-reality-id-like-to-see-change/ ]a blog post on knowing what you're eating[/url].

Well, I started by not eating any food that has its own TV advert...

I suspect they probably spray some fungicide on and seal them.

Pretty sure our supermarket (Waitrose darling...) sells english apples all winter incidentally.

but it's not rocket surgery, some people claim these evil food producers 'hide' lots of salt, sugar and fat in processed foods - well they don't it's clearly labelled.

Have a look at processing aids in the food industry. These can be used and not declared on the label as an ingredient. The processed food industry is having a concerted push on getting synthetic things off-label as mentioned in the article linked above.

it's basically saving you the time it takes to chop and fry an onion and some garlic, then chuck in some dried herbs?

Also includes tomatoes. Roasting them nicely takes a bit of time, and you have to plan ahead to buy them and use them before they rot. Plus they aren't cheap. And it's almost certainly more eco friendly to stew vast quantities of tomatoes in Italy during the summer and store them in jars than it is to fly fresh tomatoes to the UK all year round so you can stew them in your own kitchen.

Do it yourself, takes no time at all, far cheaper

Disagree. Jar of Lloyd's best, £2. You need quite a lot of tomatoes to get that rich taste so I'm going to go with 1kg, which in plum tomatoes alone is £3 from Tesco. You could do ok with tinned I suppose, that'd be slightly cheaper I suppose. The wine's not as cheap though.

Unless you're one of these people who chucks some dried herbs and a splodge of tomato purree in some mince and calls it bolognaise? If so, I disagree that it tastes better 🙂

Undamaged apples will keep for ages in the right environment.

Saw a bit about this on telly. They put apples in a humungous chilled warehouse with an oxygen controlled atmosphere. No nasties involved.

Jars of sauces such as dolmio are just rank. Fair enough, if you are so pushed for time, I suppose it is better than a ready meal lasagne, but not a patch on what you can make with little extra effort or cost.

Dolmio's not that nice, but Lloyd is. I'll bet yours isn't as nice, and I'll do a double blind test if you're local, and video it.

the thing with sauces such as tomato ones is that they can legally say it contains tomatoes even if they are reconsituted from a pulp so any benefit you'd get has been processed out of them,as others have said where's the hard ship in knocking up a quick sauce, knowing what is in it, can't take more than ten mins if you're in a hurry.

any benefit you'd get has been processed out of them,

Wtf are you talking about? Have you ever cooked a tomato? What the hell is cooking tomatoes if it's not reducing them to a pulp? You honestly think that when the big nasty people heat up their tomatoes in a big pan they are spending time and money to remove the nutrients to be especially mean to you?

no .check out the article linked earlier by llama and it describes better than I could the processes used in processing food whereby cheaper ingredients can be substituted .sadly we live in a world where food can come from some worrying sources such as gm , flavours can be replicated chemically and all sorts of nasties sneaked in by a massive food industry which historically has misled consumers to increase profit.

is that the same lloyd that got hammered for the high salt content ?

This thread is STW through and through - Pedantry, middle class angst, middle class snobbery, inverted snobbery, one-upmanship, taking offence at the slightest thing. All we need is jhj to join with his conspiracy theory about big business making us all fat so that we become p-does for the politicians or something and it'll be complete.

Well done everyone and carry on 🙂

Yes, some people in the industry do stuff like that, I'm sure, but not all of them.

There is good ready made food as well as shite.

I'm out

People seem to be confusing processed with converting the food from it's original form.

Obviously pretty much any form of cooking involves "processing" the food in some way, but the conventional idea of processed food is that which has been created, treated or altered with non-naturally occuring additives, colourings etc.

I avoid "processed" food as much as possible and classify it more as "eating clean". I'm happy to cook and prepare my own meals safe in the knowledge that I controlled exactly what ingredients went into it rather than eating an off the shelf ready meal that's full of additional guff I'd prefer not to eat.

but the conventional idea of processed food is that which has been created, treated or altered with non-naturally occuring additives, colourings etc.

Indeed. Check the ingredients.

I prefer to buy some quality ready made food and not waste as much time farting about in the kitchen, so I can use it elsewhere.

Oh and Aunt f'in Bessies and her lazy-ass expensive cardboard yorkshires! Makes my blood boil that stuff. They don't even taste nice.

I give you .. pancake mix!

Some processing can be good. Apparently tinned toms contain more lycopene than fresh. I don't know what it is or why more is good though 🙂

Some processing can be good. Apparently tinned toms contain more lycopene than fresh. I don't know what it is or why more is good though

I'm pretty sure it makes you turn into a werewolf.

Gives peas a chance

Are you part of some underground revolutionary army..? I've seen your work.

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No need to be too zealous about it though I don't think. Me and MrsSalmon cook probably 80-90% of our meals from scratch but every so often we'll be lazy and have a chicken pie and chips (Linda McCartney for her). I reckon it's all good as long as it's not routine, but I would steer clear of things like whole curry ready meals etc.
I'm with molgrips in that not everything that comes in a packet from the supermarket is necessarily all that bad. Obviously you need to keep an eye on the ingredients though.

I draw the line at ready meals, purely due to taste. The extra effort of cooking a spice tailor meal is worth the 1000x taste increase. Stewing my own tomatoes isn't, for me.

Dolmio's not that nice, but Lloyd is. I'll bet yours isn't as nice, and I'll do a double blind test if you're local, and video it.

I'm not local to you, but my bolgnese from tinned toms would kick Lloyd's best's arse 🙂

Whenever I've tried a chilli or bolognaise that its creator had boasted about, it's been seriously rubbish.

+1 for sweet potato wedges/chips, I'd have them over spuds any day!

molgrips - Member

Whenever I've tried a chilli or bolognaise that its creator had boasted about, it's been seriously rubbish.

Maybe you just like shit food? 🙂

Just saying it's a possibility. 😐

Next you'll be telling me to make my own passata...

Does anybody have a decent spice mix/recipe for fajitas. The packet ingredients are very simple but I've been struggling to match the blend. Maybe it is the msg that adds that zing?

FWIW with the OP. In general when people say they have found a revolutionary health benefit from a particular diet what I believe is happening is that they are now paying more attention to what they eat and that is what makes the difference not the new diet.

There's an excellent one in a hairy bikers cookbook I've got at home - I'll post it up for you.

"Whenever I've tried a chilli or bolognaise that its creator had boasted about, it's been seriously rubbish."

not enough salt is my guess based on what you have said.

"+1 for sweet potato wedges/chips, I'd have them over spuds any day!"

oooooh yes , i love sweet potatoes me , sweet potato mash , roasted sweet potatos , sweet potatos in my curries , sweet potato goes with everything.

much better than the bland ole white potato......(fresh new tatties from the garden boiled excepted.)

"Whenever I've tried a chilli or bolognaise that its creator had boasted about, it's been seriously rubbish."

not enough salt is my guess based on what you have said.

Pfft. I rarely add salt to my food, even that which I cook from scratch, so I don't have a salt-inclined pallette.

I've had lots of salty pre made food, I don't like it so I don't buy it.

Plus I can tel the difference between shit food and good food. I once had someone rave about their amazing chilli, so I asked them for the recipe. It was basically tomato puree and chillis so that's what it tasted like.

@miketually - share your recipe? I'm up for improving on Lloyd if you can.

IME there's really no secret to bolognese - beef, onion, garlic, seasoning then tomatoes, finely chopped celery and carrot. just don't use cheap tomatoes and reduce it all slowly

IME there's really no secret to bolognese - beef, onion, garlic, seasoning then tomatoes, finely chopped celery and carrot. just don't use cheap tomatoes and reduce it all slowly

Chicken livers, milk, red wine, nutmeg.

"Whenever I've tried a chilli or bolognaise that its creator had boasted about, it's been seriously rubbish."

Bolognaise needs wine!

PS there's half a tsp of salt in a jar of dolmio - some of it will be from the ingredients I assume and some added. Roughly 3g in a jar of Lloyd's.

Is that a lot?

Molgrips of course you are correct, as ever, nothing is black and white. Some processed food is better than others. If you like Loyd Grossman sauces fair enough, they are one of the better ones I assume.

I'm no fanatic slaved to the kitchen making my own passata and stewing down kilos of tomatoes. For my bol I usually use tomato puree, but I get the best I can afford, and I only use a glass of white, but that's down to my personal taste preferences, which may be different to yours.

However I believe the point is still valid: it is better to get as close to basic ingredients as is practical for you. If that means buying the best ready made sauce you can get, well it's not for me but it's better than not caring at all.

I just have an issue of trust. I find it too easy to imagine Premier Foods PLC (producer of Lloyd G sauces) valuing shareholder return over quality. They don't sit there on day 1 with the intention to make unhealthy food, but I cannot believe that there is no pressure at all on revenue, and imagine that over time suppliers get swapped and pushed, ingredients get replaced, the original intention slips away, and shareholders clap.

(yes I am a middle aged well off middle class liberal, so sue me)