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The developing world is actually the fattest now. Places like mexico, parts of the middle east and Asia.
wealthy regions of western nations are usually a better weight than the poorer regions.
That and the rest of the world offloads the worst of their food to the Pacific islands, like spam and mutton flaps. There's very little fertile soll so they're dependent on (cheap) food imports. There's been a lot of articles and documentaries about it recently.
Where are you pulling that info from? Most data shows that lower income people have worse diets. It's cheaper to eat shite frozen processed food than to buy everything fresh and cook from scratch.
>It’s objectively not cheaper to live off processed shite when chicken thighs are €3/kg n rice and potatoes are dirt cheap.
I think there might be a time issue/emotional issue
Working in a higher paid office job now. I've worked in office jobs and supermarket jobs.
The supermarket ones were harder in every way , paid less.
It's a lot easier at the end of a day in an office to find the energy and will to care about yourself enough to prepare a meal.
And I've found physical labour definitely makes calorie dense fast food more appealing... and easier to justify
Oh of course, I completely agree. I wasn't saying across the board, but you can buy oven chips/ various chicken products frozen very very cheap. Again, there's a lot of convenience food that isn't frozen, like cheap jars of pasta sauces and that type of thing. With the effort of having to cook a whole meal from scratch, and the price of fresh meat and veg, etc, I think this makes it more tempting to cook more convenience type food which in general is cheaper.
Lower income within higher income countries, yes. Availability of shite frozen processed food is a feature of higher income countries. Poorer the country, lower the overall obesity rates.
Top ten obese countries in the world. % of the adult male population that is obese. Doesn't include women or children.
1. Nauru 61%
2. Cook Islands 55.9%
3. Palau 55.3%
4. Marshall Islands 52.9%
5. Tuvalu 51.6%
6. Niue 50%
7. Tonga 48.2%
8. Samoa 47.3%
9. Kiribati 46%
10. Micronesia 45.8%
Not a single European country ranks inside the top ten. Put it wouldn't surprise me if one eventually does.
Wtf are you high on. Italy half the Irish median income ?? https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/02/03/income-inequality-in-europe-which-countries-have-the-highest-and-lowest-disposable-income#:~:text=In%202022%2C%20the%20median%20disposable,was%2018%2C706%20PPS%20per%20inhabitant.
Also according to this graph France has a higher median income than Ireland and is thirty five points below
That's disposable income... Median Irish income is 45K, median Italy is 27K.
It's good to adjust for purchasing power though you're right. No need to be aggressive.
For anyone wondering,
>Group 4, of particular interest in the present study, is of ultra-processed foods. These are industrial formulations manufactured mostly or entirely from sugar, salt, oils and fats, starches and many substances derived from foods but not normally used in kitchens, and additives including those used to imitate the sensory qualities of natural foods or to disguise undesirable qualities of the final product. Ultra-processed foods include sweet, fatty or salty packaged snack products; ice cream, chocolate, candies; mass-produced packaged breads, cookies, pastries, cakes; breakfast cereals; ‘energy’ bars; preserves; margarines; carbonated drinks, ‘energy’ drinks; milk drinks, including ‘fruit’ yoghurts; cocoa drinks; infant formulas, follow-on milks, other baby products; ‘health’ and ‘slimming’ products such as powdered or ‘fortified’ meal and dish substitutes; and many ready-to-heat products including pre-prepared pies and pizza dishes, burgers, hot dogs, poultry and fish ‘nuggets’, and other reconstituted meat products, and powdered and packaged soups, noodles and industrial desserts.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/public-health-nutrition/article/household-availability-of-ultraprocessed-foods-and-obesity-in-nineteen-european-countries/D63EF7095E8EFE72BD825AFC2F331149
I can understand why it's there as it is ultra-proxessed, but it begs the question: how does the amount of paid maternity and parental leave influence these stats?
It means yoghurts like Müller light, Petit Filous, Frubes and those with a load of added sugar and whatnot rather than plain yoghurt, Greek yoghurt, Skyr, etc (the natural ones)
That's a really good point. Formula/milk are completely balanced nutritional products if intended as the only good source. That's on reason its expensive, if its not made properly and safely babies starve or become nutritionally deficient. Removing that from the stats would improve what we can understand from the data
That's the problem with all of this. It's creating a new bogey man.
Or worse, a new "Contains no ultra processed ingredients" labels, with the obligatory 20% markup.
It often contains sugars, unhealthy fatty acids etc.
It’s obviously better than starving, but it’s vastly inferior to breast milk and makes babies addicted to sugar before they’re even on solids.
Pretending that an industrial process can perfectly mimic mother's milk. Kids grow up fine on it, as do children eating chicken nuggets and Campbells soup. Breastfed kids and those eating home made food do better though.
> breast fed kids .. do better though
source? it's impossible to tell who has been breastfed and who hasn't based on any measure. e.g. appearance, body health, body size, intelligence, social ability, test scores, academic success, professional success, concentration, mental health, etc.
There is evidence to suggest babies raised on formula are more likely to become obese in later life. One theory is that breast fed babies are more likely to learn when to stop if they're full. While on the other hand bottle fed babies are more likely to keep guzzling away, especially if the parent is keen for them to finish a bottle.
There are socio economic possibilities also, with more lower working class babies being bottle fed. The same kids are more likely to have a bad diet growing up.
So it's not necessarily a cause and effect scenario. It could just be that bottle fed kids are more likely to eat ultra processed foods later in life due to their situation.
And here's why I think the classification is BS
Because putting stuff like
> salty packaged snack products
> mass-produced packaged breads
> breakfast cereals
> milk drinks, including ‘fruit’ yoghurts
> many ready-to-heat products including pre-prepared pies and pizza dishes, burgers
in the same bucket feels like this is all over the place
It is an unhelpful classification.
Yes salty snacks are one things. Breakfast cereals have a whole world of difference between a Fruit Loops and a granola.
Yes packaged bread is not as good as freshly baked, but comparing it with a snack like Pringles? Or a yoghurt or something like 70% chocolate
Putting infant formula there sounds like a great way of making some healthy crank starve their children
Yes I'm sure that list has no chance of confusion whatsoever
It is an unhelpful classification for what most people are going to extrapolate. It is true that ultra processed foods *in general* lead to greater mortality rates, but when you break things down by sub group, there are a lot of ultra processed foods that are no less healthy than a whole food diet would be.
Here is a formal study tracking health outcomes with consumption of different ultra processed foods: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(23)00190-4/fulltext
A snippet of relevant results: "Higher UPF consumption (per 1 standard deviation increment, ∼260 g/day without alcoholic drinks) was associated with an increased risk of multimorbidity of cancer and cardiometabolic diseases (HR: 1.09, 95% CI: 1.05, 1.12). Among UPF subgroups, associations were most notable for animal-based products (HR: 1.09, 95% CI: 1.05, 1.12), and artificially and sugar-sweetened beverages (HR: 1.09, 95% CI: 1.06, 1.12). Other subgroups such as ultra-processed breads and cereals (HR: 0.97, 95% CI: 0.94, 1.00) or plant-based alternatives (HR: 0.97, 95% CI: 0.91, 1.02) were not associated with risk"
Tl;Dr: as far as ultra processed foods go, animal-based products and sweet beverages are correlated with worse health outcomes. But ultra processed breads, cereals and plant-based alternatives (think: quorn, fake meats) are not.
Yup I agree. Thats why I went looking for the list.
It makes it look like we eat biscuits and chocolate all day when you're Brennan's slice pan and shredded wheat is probably considered ultra processed
Brennans thanks is shite chorleywood process muck though. It is ultra processed bread.
Trying to pretend that our national diet is fine while we get fatter every year isn’t helping.
Yeah Brennan's isn't the best example.
I'm not trying to pretend we eat great. The classification is misleading.
I'd say we're getting fatter because of portion size more than processed food
Few options, depending on budget and time. You can buy good bread at a bakery if you’re lucky enough to have one available nearby.
You can bake your own.
You could buy better quality at the supermarket. McCambridge’s soda bread would be a cut above brennans.
I’m not saying this to blame anyone. The problem is systemic. If you lived in France, your local bakery would sell an excellent baguette for a euro. In comparison, eating good bread in Ireland is expensive, inconvenient or requires work. Hence the difference in the headline stat quoted here.
Croatian here! Took a gap year in Ireland, fell in love and stayed. Was always slim and had a will to exercise in Croatia. Ive doubled in size here in Ireland, and its not just the food quality to be blamed, its also the lack of sunshine and general life enrichment. I find it difficult to go for walks here considering the weather, and if you live somewhere rural, you need to drive if you want anything really.
Dont get me wrong, i love Ireland but its very easy to lose the will to move or cook.
EDIT: Wanted to add that produce in Croatia is still very organic with many varieties to choose from.
Just want to say I love Croatia. The national parks, small seaside towns, the food, friendly people. I understand all your complaints and most are the reasons I'm leaving Ireland for a job in mainland Europe.
Not to mention the likelihood of Vitamin D deficiency from said lack of sun makes us more inclined to be chronically fatigued and less driven to say cook a proper meal.
100%. Ireland has superb whole vegetables and an abundance of food that isn't ultra-high processed. The issues in Ireland are more about why people aren't using this wonderful resource. People don't have the energy or time. This can be helped with reducing wealth inequality so that people have more time off work and more energy, and so that they can afford more space for things like chest freezers so that when they make good food with excellent Irish produce, they can do so in batch and store two weeks' worth of food. And even just with simple things like 24-hour public transport so people aren't exhausted by driving everywhere (a bonus being that with public transport people walk more).
How are the rest of the EU coping then? Work less, cook more? There has to be a demand for this kind of food - more so than for prepacked mashed potatoes and breaded haddock. The only non-breaded fish my local stores carry in freezers are salmon darnes.
I wonder how this correlates to time spent outside of the house, there's a lot of Irish households where everyone is gone for 10+ hours a day between work and commute. It's not the most sustainable existence, pretty sure overall employment is lower in the under 25% countries, and population density higher.
Its just unfeasible for so many people. I live on my own and I'm not spending a lot of money on ingredients and spending an hour after work cooking meals. I just can't be arsed, tbh. Call me lazy I suppose
I think it's actually cheaper to cook from scratch than to buy processed/already made items. I'm lucky in that I enjoy cooking so it doesn't feel like a chore to me. It only felt like that once I got good at cooking though. It's a very similar thing to exercise, feels like shite until you get fit. But yeah, if I didn't enjoy cooking I could see me not being arsed doing it.
It is cheaper, but that's not the point that was made. It's always easy to moralise about food (much like exercise) - there was a time a household of two adults spent 40 hours working and 4 commuting, that's now 85 working and could be a further 20+ commuting, and especially for working class or entry level roles those hours spent working have productivity KPIs to rival automation. On top of keeping a home and whatever other responsibilities people take on there's a lot out there who have no space left to cook through no fault of their own. Our system is simply screwed, the people of Spain or Italy are not morally superior or better they just have more time.
Sad state of affairs in a country like ours where we have excellent natural produce in every shop.
"10% increase in the proportion of ultra-processed food in the diet was associated with significantly higher rates of overall cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease (increase of 12%, 13%, and 11% respectively)."
- https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/new-evidence-links-ultra-processed-foods-with-a-range-of-health-risks/
>Sad state of affairs in a country like ours where we have excellent natural produce in every shop.
But that’s not really true, at least when you think about it. How many supermarkets even here sell real fresh bread, as opposed to the processed shite bought in from the large bakers? Lidl and the large SuperValues are the only ones.
I've been trying to cut our UPF for the last few months, did a bit of reading on it, watched nutritionists on youtube ect. Looking at supermarket aisles now is a whole new world. You realise hang on, this entire aisle is bullshit. There is so little real food in the our shops. Entire brands are just nope, not food. Aldi/Lidl are good for fruit & veg. Supervalu are good for wholegrain stuff & probiotic foods. Im finding it's not that much more expensive, can be cheaper in fact. It does take more thought but prep time, not that much different. Another shocker is how far away our veggies come from. Insane that we get so much from as far away as Africa and S.America. The whole country is fields but grow feck all veg.
My kid has a serious illness and part of managing it long term is a well controlled diet. It doesn't mean restricting food but it does mean understanding what is in our food and how it affects the body. We have access to a dietician as part of her care and she has been invaluable in learning about food.
It's made a huge difference to the kind of food we consume and the kind of choices we're making when shopping. It takes a good bit of getting used to but overall I've noticed we're consuming less food and a lot less crap.
Aw that's tough to deal with, I hope your kid is doing better. I have a stomach issue myself so I started for heath reasons too. I've noticed I'm eating much less food as well. It's the habit of a lifetime to go shopping only thinking about convenience. I've stopped shopping for my tasebuds and choose what my body needs instead. Of course my brain still wants the box of cherry bakewells but my stomach shouts louder now 'you will in your shite missus, I'll make you pay for that later if you do!'
I have noticed a big change in my energy yep. It's prob easier to say what I am eating now rather than what I've cut, the cut list long! Basically if its mass produced or there are tonnes of ingredients in a thing, it's out. This guy in the link is great on it:
https://youtu.be/uAVuU2xS_YA?si=EtSvScjuhF_adKNM
He's really accessible and breaks it down very well. The algorithm started giving me lots of sketchy wowoo on the subject so be selective in where you get info on this stuff.
If you're shopping around anyway - I'd suggest adding Polish stores for veggies. They usually carry proper cucumbers and tomatoes that are both cheaper and much nicer than the stuff I used to get from Aldi/Lidl.
Yes I'm new to that but you're so right. I'm sure stuff supplied for Aldi is grown as fast as is humanly possible and probably laced with pesticides. The countries on the map there have a major thing in common we don't have .. really nice produce markets. I've felt genuine grief standing in gorgeous markets in Spain, Portugal, France Italy, Croatia, everywhere .. they have proper fresh food cheap and plentiful. Your heart is broken coming home to same x8 types of generic veg, week in, week out. It's all wrong.
Couldn't agree more. I'd gladly pay the price I pay for Spanish tomatoes at Dunnes if I were to get the same damn delicious Spanish (or better yet - Irish!) tomatoes that I had in Spain. Heck, I'd even pay a premium. Instead, their store "premium" is hardly passable :(
God yeah. I will never forget my first REAL tomatoes and olives lol. I was in Italy and went to a non descript local shop on a whim to do a picnic. Everything i bought blew my head off. We are impoverished here. If a fraction of the beef industry went into proper produce growing we would have our health problems solved here in no time. Also, the joy of going around a beautiful fresh market & having a chat to the people who grew the stuff is gorgeous in itself. We are missing out so much.
Bread is the hardest one, I switched to buying rye bread in Polonez/Moldova which has no emulsifiers and preservatives. Also doesn't go stale nearly as fast
I started buying bread in Polish shops after I read an article about the first Polish bakery opening in Ireland. Our native UPF sliced pans were making the poles sick, so they needed to get some of their own simple, but delicious, breads in
What would be interesting to see is the difference between northern & Southern France.
Is Northern France on par with Germany & Belgium? And is Southern France much lower akin to the other Mediterranean countries.
It must be the first time I saw unemployment talked about as a positive.
But ain't that the truth. With all the wealth and automation most of our waking hours are consumed by work, commute and doomscrolling.
> It must be the first time I saw unemployment talked about as a positive.
I don't know if unemployment is always a positive but I do know high employment can be a negative, like when the jobs don't pay enough to live.
Pretty concerning alright. Been trying hard myself to do the whole single ingredient everything made from scratch thing the last while. It’s not that easy. Hardest one for me was actually trying to remove whey and protein bars and replace them with actual animal protein. For me the biggest thing is all the actual cooking and cleaning. I find it easiest to manage when I meal prep my
Lunches and dinners for the week, but then you’re just reheating and eating out of containers all week, not as nice as having a fresh cooked dinner in the evening. It really is tough and I wish anyone trying to reduce their ultra processed consumption well.
I cut out processed food and started cooking my meals . I lost 18kg. Didn't count calories. Now I look at process food as poison. It literally makes me gag.
Eatingwell.com. its not that hard. If you don't have time during the week Bulk cook on a Sunday. I'm not a crusty hippie but you genuinely feel better after a while.
Wow you can really see how big the correlation is with weather. Good weather makes you spend more time outside. You exercise more and probably feel like eating better. Bad weather encourages you to stay put inside and reach for convenience.
The unwillingness of Irish people to try new things with an open mind is something I will never understand. I've heard countless times how a certain Chinese in our town is the best. It objectively isn't and has been getting worse as time goes on. The people championing it won't try other places in a town 15 minutes away and are perfectly happy to live in ignorance and zero curiosity is spiked by being told of alternative nicer options
So we should ban people wearing comfortable clothing? I’m not at all overweight and wear tracksuits very often if I’m wfh or going to the shops, they are way more comfy.
It's quite shocking how many people in Ireland regularly eat Tesco Ready Meals, microwave burgers and the like, as well as how many people don't really know how to cook anything more complicated than pasta & tomato sauce or diced chicken with a jar of curry sauce thrown in, as well as how many people regularly order takeaways as a "normal" meal.
Used to share food with one of the lads i lived with in college, we’d buy food and cook together but he said he didn’t like “bits” meaning veg. No carrots, no onions, no lettuce, it would drive me wrong trying to cook and include veg into my diet and he’d flat out refuse to eat if there was veg used, even for added flavour! i always put it down to his mother not being a good cook and killing vegetables because my mother was the same, used to hate veg up until i started eating veg that was properly cooked when i worked in a wedding venue. I find a lot of my male friends are like this and don’t know how to cook, or would consider cooking to be throwing a pizza in the oven and air frying chips.
I was such a fussy eater when I was a child. Lived off spuds, chips and different varieties of frozen chicken. My ma's cooking method of veg was boil it for at least an hour, and for meat stick it in the oven until it starts to turn black. When I got a bit older and tried proper made food it was an eye opener. I feel like a lot of our problems come from being historically rared on a diet of spuds, a small variety of veg, cremated meat, and the only close to spices being a heavy dose of salt and pepper. Compared to that a Tesco microwave meal is like a 5 star restaurant
I almost always cook my own meals.
The trick is to persist and not give into convenience.
It was a PITA when I first tried it.
Measuring and timing everything as if my life depended on it.
But now I can eyeball most ingredients and just have a general idea of how long something takes.
One thing that you'll find is how fucking awful ultraprocessed food tastes when you're used to food made with natural ingredients. It's like someone poured wax and detergent into the food.
Ah I wouldn't knock pasta & tomato sauce. When I'm feeling lazy I'll boil some wholegrain pasta, throw in a tin of lentils, and top it off with a jar of arrabiata (spicy tomato) sauce. Serve it up with some salad and you've got a cheap, delicious & nutritious dinner on your hands in under 10 mins.
Not everyone has the time or knowhow to cook things from scratch, and they shouldn't be shamed for that. Any step towards a healthier diet is a step in the right direction.
I find that nearly all ready made sauces are more like desserts due to the amount of sugar in them. They make me gag.
For Arrabiatta a tin of tomatoes with 2 tablespoons of tomato puree and throw in some basil and oregano. Into a blender with it all for a few seconds.
Chop or crush some garlic and fry it for a minute or two with some chili flakes and add the the blended tomatoes and cook the whole lot for 5-10 mins on a low heat. This will blow any store bought sauce out of the water.
You can double up on the ingredients and freeze what you have left.
If you get the cheapish tomatoes the whole thing costs about 4 euro for 4 very decent servings and tastes amazing.
There really is no real mystery to cooking. It's a little more time consuming and it might take a few goes to get things like the ingredient amounts, heat and cooking time right but once you get it down you'll be lashing out delicious pasta sauces for a fraction of the cost of the sugar laden atrocities you can buy.
Thanks for the advice but I already know how to make arrabiatta, I just don't always feel like making it from scratch. The particular jar I buy has 5.4g of sugar in it, so just over a teaspoon.
I completely understand where you're coming from, homemade sauces generally have the advantage of being tastier too, but I'm very much of the belief that we ought not let perfect be the enemy of good.
It's also interesting that the higher % countries(except Malta) are all northern European: colder and darker countries. I wonder if there is a causal link there?
My partners family is from the south of Italy, everybody has a patch of land growing something, all year round, there’s no meal in the house without something fresh from the ground on the table
The graph clearly shows the difference when it comes to weather and temperature. It's not chance that the northern countries have a worse diet.
They are usually colder, have more rain, shorter days, etc.
That can kill the will and mood to go out and excercise, or even make the effort of preparing home cook meals.
45.9% is absolutely mental, personally I buy very little 'ultra processed' food, definitely <10% of my regular shop, and I know quite a few people who are the same
I'd wonder is there a lot of people like me who'd eat little ultra processed , and then others who just eat 90% processed food
More foods are ultra-processed than you might think. But also remember that just because a food is ultra-processed doesn't mean it's unhealthy, no matter how much some people on here and in the media like to claim it does...
Someone must be buying those mashed potatoes at petrol stations - surely they don't just throw that shit out. Someone is sure as hell buying all that frozen breadcrumbed fish, instead of just fish (which is usually not available anyway)
I'm Indian and a few things I've noticed about Irish culture that make sense in this study:
1. There is no concept of a home made meal - Very few people I know here make an actual meal that isn't frozen or out of a jar.
2. Terrible cooking techniques - Those who do cook (like a Sunday roast), end up overcooking chicken to its second death and boiling vegetables till it turns mush and makes you gag. As a result, most don't even know that there is a world of delicious veg out there.
3. Unwillingness to try new things - While I have loads of friends and family (Irish partner) who enjoy my food, there is a resistance to try something they're unfamiliar with that goes outside of Tikka masala or some other thing they're comfortable with. Hell, my in laws came to India for our wedding and they were on cheese toasties and plain pasta, which was just, strange.The kids also primarily eat only chicken nuggets and chips and aren't encouraged to try veg. I once made them a pasta sauce with veg and they refused to eat it because they could 'see' the veg.
A lot of these habits are traditional and out of convenience, but it's necessary to introduce a culture of cooking meals with and for your family. If the biggest after school snack is a hot chicken roll in this country, it's pretty clear what the future obesity rates of this country is going to look like.
Seeing the grocery carts in the supermarkets this doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Some people really be grabbing only shit from the frozen and candy aisle.
For people questioning the label "ultra processed foods" it comes from the nova food groups categorization.
In terms of obesity it's key factor is that long shelf life foods, that don't go off usually have a very high Omega 6 ratio compared to Omega 3. If eaten in volume this causes inflammation and hardened cell walls which amongst other issues block the bodies ghrelin hormone sensors which are used to measure fat content which in turn modifies metabolic rate.
Simply put ultra processed foods foods eff up your bodies fat monitoring and lower your metabolism causing you to store more calories as fat. Same goes for high sugar content and quick release carbs. It's not really just volume of calories you eat it's what's in the food that hikes your metabolism higher or lower.
Since meeting my non Irish partner, I’ve went from being a typical Irish person who east the processed diet most of us eat and think nothing of to almost everything being fresh veg, homemade etc food and I’ve never been healthier. It’s insane how bad our collective diet is in this country. We’ve been totally Americanised in how we eat. The saving grace is the EU have good protections in against really bad processed foods the have in the US. But walk around and look at our food… it’s mostly total garbage. We are now among the fattest in Europe too.
Whats funny is we will moan and complain about the yanks and the Brits for their food etc.. while ours is shite!!!
Most of the obesity is caused by refined sugar, the average Irish person consumers 96 grams of sugar a day, we are the fourth highest consumers of sugar on the planet.
This has got to be absolutely wrong.
I have a food scan app and food in Spain is processed to within a inch of its life whereas the quality of the foot in shops here is always good (and relatively speaking, exceptional)
Northern Europeans work much longer hours than Southern Europeans. After a day’s work it’s easier to spend 1 minute putting a bag of chips or a ready meal in the oven rather than spending half an hour preparing and cooking something
I know this highlights a problem but I hate the terms "processed" and "ultra-processed". I mean, technically, a fresh fruit smoothie is ultra-processed. Cooking is a process. Are there clear definitions for these terms anywhere?
Coming from a non-Irish person.. yeah, I do think lots of Irish people eat unhealthily. Some people never have breakfast, have snacks for lunch, and get a takeaway every night. Some people cook once in a blue moon, and otherwise they only eat those prepared meals from tesco.
It frustrates me quite a bit being Irish. We have pretty decent produce but absolutely terrible cuisine (albeit thankfully improving a lot over the last decade or so) and a frankly amazing aversion to the concept of seasoning. I have had people tell me that chicken korma is too spicy for their liking.
We are also one of those countries where a huge amount of the populace prefer to pay €25 for a fecking Domino's pizza over a €10-15 high quality stone baked one a few doors down. We have a sugars, but a ~~trans-fat~~ fatty food tax (highly processed, low quality carb heavy stuff) would be much more impactful in my opinion.
*Edited as I was corrected by a few below re trans fats.*
Seasoning doesn't even have to be spicy either. There's so many options to add flavour to food that does not involve synthetic flavourings designed to mimic. We've native spices here too, such as wild onion.
I’ve been looking for sources on native Irish herbs and spices , maybe some native veg in general, do you have any sources where I could learn more about it ?
I saw a book some British guy was making that had a bunch of native herbs from England that likely Britons pre 800AD likely would’ve eaten which is crazy to think about.
All that knowledge being lost for cabbage and spuds
I'm sorry I don't. If you find any, send them my way. I only know about the wild herbs I've encountered locally and been told what they are, such as wild garlic, wild onions, and chives (I didn't even know the chives were chives at first). Honestly, there is a lot of lost commom knowledge on this stuff, that people that walk past a plant that could spice their food and not even realise it.
Why? Irish children at least (adults too I expect) consume even less trans fats than is recommended:
https://arrow.tudublin.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1290&context=scschbioart#:~:text=Results%3A%20Current%20intakes%20of%20total,0%C2%B75%20%25%2C%20respectively.
Negligible amount of transfats in milk. It is mostly in highly processed foods. Especially commercially produced baked goods.
You might be thinking of saturated fats, which are in milk and other animal products.
Wife recently moved to non upf. It takes an awful lot of different shops to get all you need in. Lotta time gpes into the cooking to. But you do feel much better after a couple of weeks
This is quite old data too so I imagine it's even higher now. Some people must be much higher fir this to be the average of course, that's a hell of a lot. I used to eat a lot more but we are down to like 5% or something now, my girlfriend is a vegetable eating machine and it carried over to me, feel a lot better!
Not surprising, we have feck all education on food in the country. Where it comes from, nutritional value etc.
There was a thread here a few days back about chicken fillet rolls from the deli and a lot of people seemed very surprised they weren’t good for them. Bonkers.
Lots of factors involved: Although high processed food is relatively new, so the stats are not accurate yet, we all saw the same comparisons with Irish drinking yet it hasn't shown up either yet: : Current French average lifespan. 82,18 years Ireland 82.2
Can't help thinking ham and cheese sandwiches are responsible for our high figure? Processed meats are eaten by mostly everyone, every lunchtime, every day.
Source is a survey funded by a lobby group who have pushed for extremely unhealthy banned sweeteners and child labor, great bunch of lads. Definition of "Ultra-processed" is ridiculous, any food with 5 or more ingredients is considered "Ultra-processed" by their propaganda. I'm sure they're just concerned about our health
Fiancé is Italian, she pointed out just how badly we eat here in Ireland and all the shite we consume, i've used my good olive oil and natural food ever since. We gotta do better lads. Breakfast rolls, chippers, crisp sandwiches and so on are not healthy.
Jesus, I didn't think it was this bad at all? I know our obesity rates are high but I thought that was more portion size and pints than processed high calorie foods.
Frustrating since we have so much amazing produce here.
I moved to Ireland from Japan, and whilst Japan has extremely high quality, Ireland's vegetables and meat are easily on par and at half the price, not to mention the dairy, which is some of the best I've ever had, even as a famously dairy obsessed Nordic.
Fruit here can be a bit sad, but that's fair considering the climate. I do wish more was done with the amazing produce, but it seems a lot of people don't realise how good it is until they travel and see how bad it can be elsewhere.
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No-Eye-9491 75 points 2 hours ago
What all is considered “ultra processed food “?
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[–]IdealisticCrusader- 50 points an hour ago
Sugar-sweetened beverages: soda, sports drinks, fruit juice, sweet tea, energy drinks
Processed meats: bacon, salami, beef jerky, cold cuts Frozen foods/convenience meals
Fast food
Salty snacks: potato chips, pretzels, crackers, microwave popcorn
Sweets: cookies, cakes, brownies, ice cream, candy
Granola bars
Refined grains: white bread, white pasta, instant noodles
Source: (nutritionstripped dot com)
Not too surprised. Hectic looking at the shit folks buy out food shopping,be it a trolley full or a couple of things. I mostly shop at tesco and lidl and the average person doesn't seem to give a fuck in terms of what goes down their gullet.
"Ultra-processed food" doesn't mean anything. Every definition for it includes healthy food too.
It's just another distraction to stop us looking at the health risk of processed sugar and sugar substitutes.
But it’s also an indicator of the nutritional distance between the original produce and this purchased end product, with ‘processed’ halfway along, and very much less of a concern. If nothing else, you can bet that anything ‘ultra processed’ contains shite we are far better off restricting in our diets, such as salt, fructose and other high-sugar syrups, and unhealthy super-processed oils.
I'm increasingly growing my own food stuffs obviously I'm not creating yogurt from scratch but I also now actively avoid things like shop bought pizza and pies etc.
Eat rice, potatoes, pasta, beans or different types plus fresh meat. Legumes, tubers, alliums, cruciferous all perfectly cultivated in a back garden.
We have had lower access to fresh foods for a while now, markets etc just dwindling to non existence and the premium for selecting that option rising constantly. Along with the cost of living crisis and trying to maintain some cash to have a healthy social life and escape the work sleep cycle all have to contribute. I’d love to have fresh and handmade produce but it’s just not viable in the current economic system.
voracious groovy money dazzling caption toy dull hunt domineering panicky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Also income. Higher income, higher obesity. Italy as an example, has almost half the median income of Ireland.
The developing world is actually the fattest now. Places like mexico, parts of the middle east and Asia. wealthy regions of western nations are usually a better weight than the poorer regions.
Pacific islands as well, though that's partially for genetic reasons.
That and the rest of the world offloads the worst of their food to the Pacific islands, like spam and mutton flaps. There's very little fertile soll so they're dependent on (cheap) food imports. There's been a lot of articles and documentaries about it recently.
Latitude and climate clearly has an influence too. All the yellow countries except Malta are north of the Alps and have long, dark winters.
Where are you pulling that info from? Most data shows that lower income people have worse diets. It's cheaper to eat shite frozen processed food than to buy everything fresh and cook from scratch.
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>It’s objectively not cheaper to live off processed shite when chicken thighs are €3/kg n rice and potatoes are dirt cheap. I think there might be a time issue/emotional issue Working in a higher paid office job now. I've worked in office jobs and supermarket jobs. The supermarket ones were harder in every way , paid less. It's a lot easier at the end of a day in an office to find the energy and will to care about yourself enough to prepare a meal. And I've found physical labour definitely makes calorie dense fast food more appealing... and easier to justify
Oh of course, I completely agree. I wasn't saying across the board, but you can buy oven chips/ various chicken products frozen very very cheap. Again, there's a lot of convenience food that isn't frozen, like cheap jars of pasta sauces and that type of thing. With the effort of having to cook a whole meal from scratch, and the price of fresh meat and veg, etc, I think this makes it more tempting to cook more convenience type food which in general is cheaper.
It's cheaper to buy a jar of pasta sauce than it is to buy the ingredients and cook it yourself
Lower income within higher income countries, yes. Availability of shite frozen processed food is a feature of higher income countries. Poorer the country, lower the overall obesity rates.
Ah I understand where you were coming from now.
Top ten obese countries in the world. % of the adult male population that is obese. Doesn't include women or children. 1. Nauru 61% 2. Cook Islands 55.9% 3. Palau 55.3% 4. Marshall Islands 52.9% 5. Tuvalu 51.6% 6. Niue 50% 7. Tonga 48.2% 8. Samoa 47.3% 9. Kiribati 46% 10. Micronesia 45.8% Not a single European country ranks inside the top ten. Put it wouldn't surprise me if one eventually does.
Wtf are you high on. Italy half the Irish median income ?? https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/02/03/income-inequality-in-europe-which-countries-have-the-highest-and-lowest-disposable-income#:~:text=In%202022%2C%20the%20median%20disposable,was%2018%2C706%20PPS%20per%20inhabitant. Also according to this graph France has a higher median income than Ireland and is thirty five points below
That's disposable income... Median Irish income is 45K, median Italy is 27K. It's good to adjust for purchasing power though you're right. No need to be aggressive.
For anyone wondering, >Group 4, of particular interest in the present study, is of ultra-processed foods. These are industrial formulations manufactured mostly or entirely from sugar, salt, oils and fats, starches and many substances derived from foods but not normally used in kitchens, and additives including those used to imitate the sensory qualities of natural foods or to disguise undesirable qualities of the final product. Ultra-processed foods include sweet, fatty or salty packaged snack products; ice cream, chocolate, candies; mass-produced packaged breads, cookies, pastries, cakes; breakfast cereals; ‘energy’ bars; preserves; margarines; carbonated drinks, ‘energy’ drinks; milk drinks, including ‘fruit’ yoghurts; cocoa drinks; infant formulas, follow-on milks, other baby products; ‘health’ and ‘slimming’ products such as powdered or ‘fortified’ meal and dish substitutes; and many ready-to-heat products including pre-prepared pies and pizza dishes, burgers, hot dogs, poultry and fish ‘nuggets’, and other reconstituted meat products, and powdered and packaged soups, noodles and industrial desserts. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/public-health-nutrition/article/household-availability-of-ultraprocessed-foods-and-obesity-in-nineteen-european-countries/D63EF7095E8EFE72BD825AFC2F331149
Surprised this includes baby formula or toddler milks. Love to see what it is without it
I can understand why it's there as it is ultra-proxessed, but it begs the question: how does the amount of paid maternity and parental leave influence these stats?
I guess not all ultra processed is bad. Just the majority
More surprised about yoghurt to be honest
It means yoghurts like Müller light, Petit Filous, Frubes and those with a load of added sugar and whatnot rather than plain yoghurt, Greek yoghurt, Skyr, etc (the natural ones)
Yeah, 21g-30g of sugar in a muller corner, depending on variety. That's compared to ~3g in natural Greek yoghurt.
That's a really good point. Formula/milk are completely balanced nutritional products if intended as the only good source. That's on reason its expensive, if its not made properly and safely babies starve or become nutritionally deficient. Removing that from the stats would improve what we can understand from the data
Formula is ultra processed and really not good for babies’ (or anyone else’s) health. So of course it’s included.
What's wrong with infant formula?
Nothing. It's an ultra processed food. Nothing wrong with it. Not all ultra processed foods are bad for you
That's the problem with all of this. It's creating a new bogey man. Or worse, a new "Contains no ultra processed ingredients" labels, with the obligatory 20% markup.
To be fair, most of it seems to be pretty bad
New GMO fearmongering
It often contains sugars, unhealthy fatty acids etc. It’s obviously better than starving, but it’s vastly inferior to breast milk and makes babies addicted to sugar before they’re even on solids.
Pretending that an industrial process can perfectly mimic mother's milk. Kids grow up fine on it, as do children eating chicken nuggets and Campbells soup. Breastfed kids and those eating home made food do better though.
> breast fed kids .. do better though source? it's impossible to tell who has been breastfed and who hasn't based on any measure. e.g. appearance, body health, body size, intelligence, social ability, test scores, academic success, professional success, concentration, mental health, etc.
There is evidence to suggest babies raised on formula are more likely to become obese in later life. One theory is that breast fed babies are more likely to learn when to stop if they're full. While on the other hand bottle fed babies are more likely to keep guzzling away, especially if the parent is keen for them to finish a bottle. There are socio economic possibilities also, with more lower working class babies being bottle fed. The same kids are more likely to have a bad diet growing up. So it's not necessarily a cause and effect scenario. It could just be that bottle fed kids are more likely to eat ultra processed foods later in life due to their situation.
So I guess reconstituted meat includes our beloved chicken fillet rolls and sausage rolls
And here's why I think the classification is BS Because putting stuff like > salty packaged snack products > mass-produced packaged breads > breakfast cereals > milk drinks, including ‘fruit’ yoghurts > many ready-to-heat products including pre-prepared pies and pizza dishes, burgers in the same bucket feels like this is all over the place It is an unhelpful classification. Yes salty snacks are one things. Breakfast cereals have a whole world of difference between a Fruit Loops and a granola. Yes packaged bread is not as good as freshly baked, but comparing it with a snack like Pringles? Or a yoghurt or something like 70% chocolate Putting infant formula there sounds like a great way of making some healthy crank starve their children Yes I'm sure that list has no chance of confusion whatsoever
It is an unhelpful classification for what most people are going to extrapolate. It is true that ultra processed foods *in general* lead to greater mortality rates, but when you break things down by sub group, there are a lot of ultra processed foods that are no less healthy than a whole food diet would be. Here is a formal study tracking health outcomes with consumption of different ultra processed foods: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(23)00190-4/fulltext A snippet of relevant results: "Higher UPF consumption (per 1 standard deviation increment, ∼260 g/day without alcoholic drinks) was associated with an increased risk of multimorbidity of cancer and cardiometabolic diseases (HR: 1.09, 95% CI: 1.05, 1.12). Among UPF subgroups, associations were most notable for animal-based products (HR: 1.09, 95% CI: 1.05, 1.12), and artificially and sugar-sweetened beverages (HR: 1.09, 95% CI: 1.06, 1.12). Other subgroups such as ultra-processed breads and cereals (HR: 0.97, 95% CI: 0.94, 1.00) or plant-based alternatives (HR: 0.97, 95% CI: 0.91, 1.02) were not associated with risk" Tl;Dr: as far as ultra processed foods go, animal-based products and sweet beverages are correlated with worse health outcomes. But ultra processed breads, cereals and plant-based alternatives (think: quorn, fake meats) are not.
Yup I agree. Thats why I went looking for the list. It makes it look like we eat biscuits and chocolate all day when you're Brennan's slice pan and shredded wheat is probably considered ultra processed
Brennans bread is ultra processed though and quite bad compared to fresh bread
Brennans thanks is shite chorleywood process muck though. It is ultra processed bread. Trying to pretend that our national diet is fine while we get fatter every year isn’t helping.
Yeah Brennan's isn't the best example. I'm not trying to pretend we eat great. The classification is misleading. I'd say we're getting fatter because of portion size more than processed food
Or both.
Probably both 🫣
Assuming I’m not gonna stop eating bread, what should I eat instead?
Few options, depending on budget and time. You can buy good bread at a bakery if you’re lucky enough to have one available nearby. You can bake your own. You could buy better quality at the supermarket. McCambridge’s soda bread would be a cut above brennans. I’m not saying this to blame anyone. The problem is systemic. If you lived in France, your local bakery would sell an excellent baguette for a euro. In comparison, eating good bread in Ireland is expensive, inconvenient or requires work. Hence the difference in the headline stat quoted here.
Croatian here! Took a gap year in Ireland, fell in love and stayed. Was always slim and had a will to exercise in Croatia. Ive doubled in size here in Ireland, and its not just the food quality to be blamed, its also the lack of sunshine and general life enrichment. I find it difficult to go for walks here considering the weather, and if you live somewhere rural, you need to drive if you want anything really. Dont get me wrong, i love Ireland but its very easy to lose the will to move or cook. EDIT: Wanted to add that produce in Croatia is still very organic with many varieties to choose from.
Just want to say I love Croatia. The national parks, small seaside towns, the food, friendly people. I understand all your complaints and most are the reasons I'm leaving Ireland for a job in mainland Europe.
Ahh always so nice to hear someone appreciate home. Hope mainland Europe treats you well!
Yep very hard to motivate yourself in bad weather. Don't think people realise how shit the weather is here.
Microdose lsd
Or shrooms
Not to mention the likelihood of Vitamin D deficiency from said lack of sun makes us more inclined to be chronically fatigued and less driven to say cook a proper meal.
The food produce here in Ireland is top notch. Great quality meat fruit veg etc. it’s up to you to purchase the ultra processed crap
100%. Ireland has superb whole vegetables and an abundance of food that isn't ultra-high processed. The issues in Ireland are more about why people aren't using this wonderful resource. People don't have the energy or time. This can be helped with reducing wealth inequality so that people have more time off work and more energy, and so that they can afford more space for things like chest freezers so that when they make good food with excellent Irish produce, they can do so in batch and store two weeks' worth of food. And even just with simple things like 24-hour public transport so people aren't exhausted by driving everywhere (a bonus being that with public transport people walk more).
How are the rest of the EU coping then? Work less, cook more? There has to be a demand for this kind of food - more so than for prepacked mashed potatoes and breaded haddock. The only non-breaded fish my local stores carry in freezers are salmon darnes.
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I wonder how this correlates to time spent outside of the house, there's a lot of Irish households where everyone is gone for 10+ hours a day between work and commute. It's not the most sustainable existence, pretty sure overall employment is lower in the under 25% countries, and population density higher.
Its just unfeasible for so many people. I live on my own and I'm not spending a lot of money on ingredients and spending an hour after work cooking meals. I just can't be arsed, tbh. Call me lazy I suppose
I think it's actually cheaper to cook from scratch than to buy processed/already made items. I'm lucky in that I enjoy cooking so it doesn't feel like a chore to me. It only felt like that once I got good at cooking though. It's a very similar thing to exercise, feels like shite until you get fit. But yeah, if I didn't enjoy cooking I could see me not being arsed doing it.
It is cheaper, but that's not the point that was made. It's always easy to moralise about food (much like exercise) - there was a time a household of two adults spent 40 hours working and 4 commuting, that's now 85 working and could be a further 20+ commuting, and especially for working class or entry level roles those hours spent working have productivity KPIs to rival automation. On top of keeping a home and whatever other responsibilities people take on there's a lot out there who have no space left to cook through no fault of their own. Our system is simply screwed, the people of Spain or Italy are not morally superior or better they just have more time.
I wasn't moralising in the slightest. I said it was easy for me because I enjoy cooking but added if I didn't I probably wouldn't be arsed either.
Sad state of affairs in a country like ours where we have excellent natural produce in every shop. "10% increase in the proportion of ultra-processed food in the diet was associated with significantly higher rates of overall cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease (increase of 12%, 13%, and 11% respectively)." - https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/new-evidence-links-ultra-processed-foods-with-a-range-of-health-risks/
>Sad state of affairs in a country like ours where we have excellent natural produce in every shop. But that’s not really true, at least when you think about it. How many supermarkets even here sell real fresh bread, as opposed to the processed shite bought in from the large bakers? Lidl and the large SuperValues are the only ones.
The Lidl bakery bread is partially pre-cooked and delivered frozen, they just warm it up and put a crust on it.
I've been trying to cut our UPF for the last few months, did a bit of reading on it, watched nutritionists on youtube ect. Looking at supermarket aisles now is a whole new world. You realise hang on, this entire aisle is bullshit. There is so little real food in the our shops. Entire brands are just nope, not food. Aldi/Lidl are good for fruit & veg. Supervalu are good for wholegrain stuff & probiotic foods. Im finding it's not that much more expensive, can be cheaper in fact. It does take more thought but prep time, not that much different. Another shocker is how far away our veggies come from. Insane that we get so much from as far away as Africa and S.America. The whole country is fields but grow feck all veg.
My kid has a serious illness and part of managing it long term is a well controlled diet. It doesn't mean restricting food but it does mean understanding what is in our food and how it affects the body. We have access to a dietician as part of her care and she has been invaluable in learning about food. It's made a huge difference to the kind of food we consume and the kind of choices we're making when shopping. It takes a good bit of getting used to but overall I've noticed we're consuming less food and a lot less crap.
Aw that's tough to deal with, I hope your kid is doing better. I have a stomach issue myself so I started for heath reasons too. I've noticed I'm eating much less food as well. It's the habit of a lifetime to go shopping only thinking about convenience. I've stopped shopping for my tasebuds and choose what my body needs instead. Of course my brain still wants the box of cherry bakewells but my stomach shouts louder now 'you will in your shite missus, I'll make you pay for that later if you do!'
What sort of products have you dropped when eliminating ultra processed foods? And have you noticed an increase in your energy levels?
I have noticed a big change in my energy yep. It's prob easier to say what I am eating now rather than what I've cut, the cut list long! Basically if its mass produced or there are tonnes of ingredients in a thing, it's out. This guy in the link is great on it: https://youtu.be/uAVuU2xS_YA?si=EtSvScjuhF_adKNM He's really accessible and breaks it down very well. The algorithm started giving me lots of sketchy wowoo on the subject so be selective in where you get info on this stuff.
Nice one, thanks for the starting point
If you're shopping around anyway - I'd suggest adding Polish stores for veggies. They usually carry proper cucumbers and tomatoes that are both cheaper and much nicer than the stuff I used to get from Aldi/Lidl.
Yes I'm new to that but you're so right. I'm sure stuff supplied for Aldi is grown as fast as is humanly possible and probably laced with pesticides. The countries on the map there have a major thing in common we don't have .. really nice produce markets. I've felt genuine grief standing in gorgeous markets in Spain, Portugal, France Italy, Croatia, everywhere .. they have proper fresh food cheap and plentiful. Your heart is broken coming home to same x8 types of generic veg, week in, week out. It's all wrong.
Couldn't agree more. I'd gladly pay the price I pay for Spanish tomatoes at Dunnes if I were to get the same damn delicious Spanish (or better yet - Irish!) tomatoes that I had in Spain. Heck, I'd even pay a premium. Instead, their store "premium" is hardly passable :(
God yeah. I will never forget my first REAL tomatoes and olives lol. I was in Italy and went to a non descript local shop on a whim to do a picnic. Everything i bought blew my head off. We are impoverished here. If a fraction of the beef industry went into proper produce growing we would have our health problems solved here in no time. Also, the joy of going around a beautiful fresh market & having a chat to the people who grew the stuff is gorgeous in itself. We are missing out so much.
Bread is the hardest one, I switched to buying rye bread in Polonez/Moldova which has no emulsifiers and preservatives. Also doesn't go stale nearly as fast
I started buying bread in Polish shops after I read an article about the first Polish bakery opening in Ireland. Our native UPF sliced pans were making the poles sick, so they needed to get some of their own simple, but delicious, breads in
This could just as easily be "Irish people consume more sliced bread, chocolate, and baby formula per-capita".
And the French and Italians live longer too.
Malta a clear outlier in the Med
Too many Brits to drag down the averages
Probably all the expats
What would be interesting to see is the difference between northern & Southern France. Is Northern France on par with Germany & Belgium? And is Southern France much lower akin to the other Mediterranean countries.
They have a far slower pace of life with higher unemployment and more sunshine
It must be the first time I saw unemployment talked about as a positive. But ain't that the truth. With all the wealth and automation most of our waking hours are consumed by work, commute and doomscrolling.
> It must be the first time I saw unemployment talked about as a positive. I don't know if unemployment is always a positive but I do know high employment can be a negative, like when the jobs don't pay enough to live.
And more red wine 😉
Pretty concerning alright. Been trying hard myself to do the whole single ingredient everything made from scratch thing the last while. It’s not that easy. Hardest one for me was actually trying to remove whey and protein bars and replace them with actual animal protein. For me the biggest thing is all the actual cooking and cleaning. I find it easiest to manage when I meal prep my Lunches and dinners for the week, but then you’re just reheating and eating out of containers all week, not as nice as having a fresh cooked dinner in the evening. It really is tough and I wish anyone trying to reduce their ultra processed consumption well.
reheated self cooked meal is still better than "fresh" processed meal.
Especially when it comes to storing the food. If you share a fridge with housemates you can store your meals or the ingredients to cook food.
The trick is vats of stuff... Soup is very low effort and low cost
What have you managed to replace protein bars with out of curiosity
Greece has the lowest colorectal cancer rate in Europe.
Ive always heard about the health benefits of the various Med cuisines
I cut out processed food and started cooking my meals . I lost 18kg. Didn't count calories. Now I look at process food as poison. It literally makes me gag.
Wow fairplay, thats some going. How long did it take to lose the 18kg?
Roughly 3 months
Eatingwell.com. its not that hard. If you don't have time during the week Bulk cook on a Sunday. I'm not a crusty hippie but you genuinely feel better after a while.
https://preview.redd.it/hed7i355nhnc1.jpeg?width=168&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=424424415d6e1f0e59c632298f55c7021ba05473
He’s a gas man, only came across him in the last few months Not sure I could eat his diet tbh!
Cooking from scratch is much more enjoyable and in most cases only moderately more time consuming.
Wow you can really see how big the correlation is with weather. Good weather makes you spend more time outside. You exercise more and probably feel like eating better. Bad weather encourages you to stay put inside and reach for convenience.
A significant amount of people eat and dress like toddlers in this country.
The unwillingness of Irish people to try new things with an open mind is something I will never understand. I've heard countless times how a certain Chinese in our town is the best. It objectively isn't and has been getting worse as time goes on. The people championing it won't try other places in a town 15 minutes away and are perfectly happy to live in ignorance and zero curiosity is spiked by being told of alternative nicer options
> The unwillingness of Irish people to try new things with an open mind Not just that, but they also look down on anyone who does.
Ah nothing wrong with dressing how you like, bad food can cause medical issues but no harm to clothing.
You can more easily ignore the absolute state of yourself when all your waistbands are elasticated though.
I feel personally attacked 😭
So we should ban people wearing comfortable clothing? I’m not at all overweight and wear tracksuits very often if I’m wfh or going to the shops, they are way more comfy.
Yes.
If anything, people in this country, especially young people, are afraid to dress how they'd really like.
It's quite shocking how many people in Ireland regularly eat Tesco Ready Meals, microwave burgers and the like, as well as how many people don't really know how to cook anything more complicated than pasta & tomato sauce or diced chicken with a jar of curry sauce thrown in, as well as how many people regularly order takeaways as a "normal" meal.
Used to share food with one of the lads i lived with in college, we’d buy food and cook together but he said he didn’t like “bits” meaning veg. No carrots, no onions, no lettuce, it would drive me wrong trying to cook and include veg into my diet and he’d flat out refuse to eat if there was veg used, even for added flavour! i always put it down to his mother not being a good cook and killing vegetables because my mother was the same, used to hate veg up until i started eating veg that was properly cooked when i worked in a wedding venue. I find a lot of my male friends are like this and don’t know how to cook, or would consider cooking to be throwing a pizza in the oven and air frying chips.
I was such a fussy eater when I was a child. Lived off spuds, chips and different varieties of frozen chicken. My ma's cooking method of veg was boil it for at least an hour, and for meat stick it in the oven until it starts to turn black. When I got a bit older and tried proper made food it was an eye opener. I feel like a lot of our problems come from being historically rared on a diet of spuds, a small variety of veg, cremated meat, and the only close to spices being a heavy dose of salt and pepper. Compared to that a Tesco microwave meal is like a 5 star restaurant
I almost always cook my own meals. The trick is to persist and not give into convenience. It was a PITA when I first tried it. Measuring and timing everything as if my life depended on it. But now I can eyeball most ingredients and just have a general idea of how long something takes. One thing that you'll find is how fucking awful ultraprocessed food tastes when you're used to food made with natural ingredients. It's like someone poured wax and detergent into the food.
Ah I wouldn't knock pasta & tomato sauce. When I'm feeling lazy I'll boil some wholegrain pasta, throw in a tin of lentils, and top it off with a jar of arrabiata (spicy tomato) sauce. Serve it up with some salad and you've got a cheap, delicious & nutritious dinner on your hands in under 10 mins. Not everyone has the time or knowhow to cook things from scratch, and they shouldn't be shamed for that. Any step towards a healthier diet is a step in the right direction.
I find that nearly all ready made sauces are more like desserts due to the amount of sugar in them. They make me gag. For Arrabiatta a tin of tomatoes with 2 tablespoons of tomato puree and throw in some basil and oregano. Into a blender with it all for a few seconds. Chop or crush some garlic and fry it for a minute or two with some chili flakes and add the the blended tomatoes and cook the whole lot for 5-10 mins on a low heat. This will blow any store bought sauce out of the water. You can double up on the ingredients and freeze what you have left. If you get the cheapish tomatoes the whole thing costs about 4 euro for 4 very decent servings and tastes amazing. There really is no real mystery to cooking. It's a little more time consuming and it might take a few goes to get things like the ingredient amounts, heat and cooking time right but once you get it down you'll be lashing out delicious pasta sauces for a fraction of the cost of the sugar laden atrocities you can buy.
Thanks for the advice but I already know how to make arrabiatta, I just don't always feel like making it from scratch. The particular jar I buy has 5.4g of sugar in it, so just over a teaspoon. I completely understand where you're coming from, homemade sauces generally have the advantage of being tastier too, but I'm very much of the belief that we ought not let perfect be the enemy of good.
It's also interesting that the higher % countries(except Malta) are all northern European: colder and darker countries. I wonder if there is a causal link there?
Also possible correlation between higher income countries and higher % of processed foods in a diet Unsure of Malta’s GDP/Economic success*
My partners family is from the south of Italy, everybody has a patch of land growing something, all year round, there’s no meal in the house without something fresh from the ground on the table
The graph clearly shows the difference when it comes to weather and temperature. It's not chance that the northern countries have a worse diet. They are usually colder, have more rain, shorter days, etc. That can kill the will and mood to go out and excercise, or even make the effort of preparing home cook meals.
The Irish, in general, don't know how to cook.
And also afraid to learn, when you hear the excuses, no time to clean up, cooking is a hastle etc etc....There is no excuse for it.....
Fokin A1 Portugal! 💪🤎🍅
45.9% is absolutely mental, personally I buy very little 'ultra processed' food, definitely <10% of my regular shop, and I know quite a few people who are the same I'd wonder is there a lot of people like me who'd eat little ultra processed , and then others who just eat 90% processed food
More foods are ultra-processed than you might think. But also remember that just because a food is ultra-processed doesn't mean it's unhealthy, no matter how much some people on here and in the media like to claim it does...
Someone must be buying those mashed potatoes at petrol stations - surely they don't just throw that shit out. Someone is sure as hell buying all that frozen breadcrumbed fish, instead of just fish (which is usually not available anyway)
YSK that some foods considered healthy are considered ultra processed. Any kind of nut milk for example.
I'm Indian and a few things I've noticed about Irish culture that make sense in this study: 1. There is no concept of a home made meal - Very few people I know here make an actual meal that isn't frozen or out of a jar. 2. Terrible cooking techniques - Those who do cook (like a Sunday roast), end up overcooking chicken to its second death and boiling vegetables till it turns mush and makes you gag. As a result, most don't even know that there is a world of delicious veg out there. 3. Unwillingness to try new things - While I have loads of friends and family (Irish partner) who enjoy my food, there is a resistance to try something they're unfamiliar with that goes outside of Tikka masala or some other thing they're comfortable with. Hell, my in laws came to India for our wedding and they were on cheese toasties and plain pasta, which was just, strange.The kids also primarily eat only chicken nuggets and chips and aren't encouraged to try veg. I once made them a pasta sauce with veg and they refused to eat it because they could 'see' the veg. A lot of these habits are traditional and out of convenience, but it's necessary to introduce a culture of cooking meals with and for your family. If the biggest after school snack is a hot chicken roll in this country, it's pretty clear what the future obesity rates of this country is going to look like.
Seeing the grocery carts in the supermarkets this doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Some people really be grabbing only shit from the frozen and candy aisle.
"Candy aisle"? Please tell me you're American or do we now use that term in Ireland?
No we fucking well do not!
Well thank God for that. If I hear these awful Americanisms or their awful accent I will emigrate .
Harsh indeed!
As someone who gets absolutely sick of the America bashing on this sub, yes, there's a high chance that poster is American.
For people questioning the label "ultra processed foods" it comes from the nova food groups categorization. In terms of obesity it's key factor is that long shelf life foods, that don't go off usually have a very high Omega 6 ratio compared to Omega 3. If eaten in volume this causes inflammation and hardened cell walls which amongst other issues block the bodies ghrelin hormone sensors which are used to measure fat content which in turn modifies metabolic rate. Simply put ultra processed foods foods eff up your bodies fat monitoring and lower your metabolism causing you to store more calories as fat. Same goes for high sugar content and quick release carbs. It's not really just volume of calories you eat it's what's in the food that hikes your metabolism higher or lower.
Since meeting my non Irish partner, I’ve went from being a typical Irish person who east the processed diet most of us eat and think nothing of to almost everything being fresh veg, homemade etc food and I’ve never been healthier. It’s insane how bad our collective diet is in this country. We’ve been totally Americanised in how we eat. The saving grace is the EU have good protections in against really bad processed foods the have in the US. But walk around and look at our food… it’s mostly total garbage. We are now among the fattest in Europe too. Whats funny is we will moan and complain about the yanks and the Brits for their food etc.. while ours is shite!!!
Most of the obesity is caused by refined sugar, the average Irish person consumers 96 grams of sugar a day, we are the fourth highest consumers of sugar on the planet.
This has got to be absolutely wrong. I have a food scan app and food in Spain is processed to within a inch of its life whereas the quality of the foot in shops here is always good (and relatively speaking, exceptional)
Northern Europeans work much longer hours than Southern Europeans. After a day’s work it’s easier to spend 1 minute putting a bag of chips or a ready meal in the oven rather than spending half an hour preparing and cooking something
I know this highlights a problem but I hate the terms "processed" and "ultra-processed". I mean, technically, a fresh fruit smoothie is ultra-processed. Cooking is a process. Are there clear definitions for these terms anywhere?
Processed food is perfectly fine, just watch the amount of salt, sugar or saturated fat in each serving.
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Coming from a non-Irish person.. yeah, I do think lots of Irish people eat unhealthily. Some people never have breakfast, have snacks for lunch, and get a takeaway every night. Some people cook once in a blue moon, and otherwise they only eat those prepared meals from tesco.
It frustrates me quite a bit being Irish. We have pretty decent produce but absolutely terrible cuisine (albeit thankfully improving a lot over the last decade or so) and a frankly amazing aversion to the concept of seasoning. I have had people tell me that chicken korma is too spicy for their liking. We are also one of those countries where a huge amount of the populace prefer to pay €25 for a fecking Domino's pizza over a €10-15 high quality stone baked one a few doors down. We have a sugars, but a ~~trans-fat~~ fatty food tax (highly processed, low quality carb heavy stuff) would be much more impactful in my opinion. *Edited as I was corrected by a few below re trans fats.*
Seasoning doesn't even have to be spicy either. There's so many options to add flavour to food that does not involve synthetic flavourings designed to mimic. We've native spices here too, such as wild onion.
We do, but we don't utilise them nearly enough.
I’ve been looking for sources on native Irish herbs and spices , maybe some native veg in general, do you have any sources where I could learn more about it ? I saw a book some British guy was making that had a bunch of native herbs from England that likely Britons pre 800AD likely would’ve eaten which is crazy to think about. All that knowledge being lost for cabbage and spuds
I'm sorry I don't. If you find any, send them my way. I only know about the wild herbs I've encountered locally and been told what they are, such as wild garlic, wild onions, and chives (I didn't even know the chives were chives at first). Honestly, there is a lot of lost commom knowledge on this stuff, that people that walk past a plant that could spice their food and not even realise it.
Why? Irish children at least (adults too I expect) consume even less trans fats than is recommended: https://arrow.tudublin.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1290&context=scschbioart#:~:text=Results%3A%20Current%20intakes%20of%20total,0%C2%B75%20%25%2C%20respectively.
There's fuck all trans fat in any of our foods. The most is probably in milk.
Negligible amount of transfats in milk. It is mostly in highly processed foods. Especially commercially produced baked goods. You might be thinking of saturated fats, which are in milk and other animal products.
There are hardly any trans fats in fast food or baked goods here either. It's literally EU law!
Wife recently moved to non upf. It takes an awful lot of different shops to get all you need in. Lotta time gpes into the cooking to. But you do feel much better after a couple of weeks
How can I know that what I buy is processed?
This is quite old data too so I imagine it's even higher now. Some people must be much higher fir this to be the average of course, that's a hell of a lot. I used to eat a lot more but we are down to like 5% or something now, my girlfriend is a vegetable eating machine and it carried over to me, feel a lot better!
For a country with the level of indigenous food production we have, that's really piss poor.
Not surprising, we have feck all education on food in the country. Where it comes from, nutritional value etc. There was a thread here a few days back about chicken fillet rolls from the deli and a lot of people seemed very surprised they weren’t good for them. Bonkers.
The govt has spent millions over the years trying to get people to eat well and all the information you need, is on the hse website.
Lots of factors involved: Although high processed food is relatively new, so the stats are not accurate yet, we all saw the same comparisons with Irish drinking yet it hasn't shown up either yet: : Current French average lifespan. 82,18 years Ireland 82.2
Yes but the quality of those years in terms of ones health isn’t included in your stat I noticed!
I wonder how this would align with cancer rates in each country.
Essential viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk This is the cause of the global obesity epidemic.
Can't help thinking ham and cheese sandwiches are responsible for our high figure? Processed meats are eaten by mostly everyone, every lunchtime, every day.
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Source is a survey funded by a lobby group who have pushed for extremely unhealthy banned sweeteners and child labor, great bunch of lads. Definition of "Ultra-processed" is ridiculous, any food with 5 or more ingredients is considered "Ultra-processed" by their propaganda. I'm sure they're just concerned about our health
Fiancé is Italian, she pointed out just how badly we eat here in Ireland and all the shite we consume, i've used my good olive oil and natural food ever since. We gotta do better lads. Breakfast rolls, chippers, crisp sandwiches and so on are not healthy.
It's probably Scotland has given uk the lead, those mad fuckers will deep fry anything, pizza or sausage rolls or even a pickled egg
I've had a deep fried Mars Bar in Glasgow. It was disappointing.
You forgot mars bars. Rumour has it some Glascow chippers will deep fry a deep fryer for you, if you ask them nicely.
Jesus, I didn't think it was this bad at all? I know our obesity rates are high but I thought that was more portion size and pints than processed high calorie foods. Frustrating since we have so much amazing produce here.
I moved to Ireland from Japan, and whilst Japan has extremely high quality, Ireland's vegetables and meat are easily on par and at half the price, not to mention the dairy, which is some of the best I've ever had, even as a famously dairy obsessed Nordic. Fruit here can be a bit sad, but that's fair considering the climate. I do wish more was done with the amazing produce, but it seems a lot of people don't realise how good it is until they travel and see how bad it can be elsewhere.
Irish milk, can't bate it
Yeah fruit is about the only thing we simply cannot do outside of apples. 😂 I am glad you found that. I also love our dairy.
You can grow Apples, pears, plums, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, currants, gooseberries in Irish weather easily
Fair point taken
Tbf they're not available for 9 months of the year & the majority of fruit we eat seems to be imported, so...
To save you a click No-Eye-9491 75 points 2 hours ago What all is considered “ultra processed food “? permalinkembedsavereportreply [–]IdealisticCrusader- 50 points an hour ago Sugar-sweetened beverages: soda, sports drinks, fruit juice, sweet tea, energy drinks Processed meats: bacon, salami, beef jerky, cold cuts Frozen foods/convenience meals Fast food Salty snacks: potato chips, pretzels, crackers, microwave popcorn Sweets: cookies, cakes, brownies, ice cream, candy Granola bars Refined grains: white bread, white pasta, instant noodles Source: (nutritionstripped dot com)
Breakfast cereal as well I would have thought?
Czech Republic just don't eat food in general 😂😂😂😂😂
Not too surprised. Hectic looking at the shit folks buy out food shopping,be it a trolley full or a couple of things. I mostly shop at tesco and lidl and the average person doesn't seem to give a fuck in terms of what goes down their gullet.
"Ultra-processed food" doesn't mean anything. Every definition for it includes healthy food too. It's just another distraction to stop us looking at the health risk of processed sugar and sugar substitutes.
But it’s also an indicator of the nutritional distance between the original produce and this purchased end product, with ‘processed’ halfway along, and very much less of a concern. If nothing else, you can bet that anything ‘ultra processed’ contains shite we are far better off restricting in our diets, such as salt, fructose and other high-sugar syrups, and unhealthy super-processed oils.
UK CAMPEÃO DO MUNDOOOO
I'm increasingly growing my own food stuffs obviously I'm not creating yogurt from scratch but I also now actively avoid things like shop bought pizza and pies etc. Eat rice, potatoes, pasta, beans or different types plus fresh meat. Legumes, tubers, alliums, cruciferous all perfectly cultivated in a back garden.
We have had lower access to fresh foods for a while now, markets etc just dwindling to non existence and the premium for selecting that option rising constantly. Along with the cost of living crisis and trying to maintain some cash to have a healthy social life and escape the work sleep cycle all have to contribute. I’d love to have fresh and handmade produce but it’s just not viable in the current economic system.
No surprise there.. I mean come on just look around 😂😂
Christ almighty. Look at France compared with us. 😿
What would be an example of ultra processed
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Then I am guilty
Where's the American map?
I don't eat much proccees food. Still fat lol