I thought I was the pinnacle of health

You can’t scroll Instagram without someone warning you about ultra-processed foods. They’ve become the wellness world’s ultimate villain in the last couple of years. Chris van Tulleken’s book Ultra-Processed People became a bestseller, Professor Tim Spector called the Brits’ UPF-heavy diets a “time bomb” and suddenly, anything that came in a packet felt suspicious.

At the time I didn’t really give it much thought. I figured as long as I wasn’t eating biscuits for breakfast or living off Deliveroo, I was doing fine. Calories in versus calories out – that was my entire definition of “healthy.” And like a lot of people trying to eat better (and save time), I fell for the so-called health aisle: low-fat yoghurts, calorie-controlled ready meals, low-sugar energy drinks, protein bars in every flavour imaginable.

But then I glanced at the back of my favourite post-gym snack and realised I couldn’t even pronounce half the ingredients: soy protein isolate, polydextrose, stabilisers. Not exactly what you’d find in the kitchen cupboard.

The funny thing is, I thought I was the pinnacle of health. Protein cereal? Tick. Plant-based sausages? Tick. Low-fat yoghurt? Tick. But the more I leaned on them, the worse I felt – sluggish, constantly peckish, and like I wasn’t really nourishing my body, just keeping it running on autopilot.

And I’m not alone, studies have found that UPFs make up a staggering 57% of UK adults’ diets, and 66% in adolescence. Our obsession with protein could be to blame, with the plant-based meat market now valued at around $10bn, and the protein supplements market predicted to grow to $10.8bn by 2030. It’s big business and easy to see how “more protein” has become shorthand for “healthier” even when that protein comes packaged with emulsifiers, thickeners and flavour enhancers.

Take protein drinks or those glossy protein yoghurts – both are usually UPF-heavy, despite their sporty marketing. In reality, a decent portion of plain Greek yoghurt with a drizzle of honey will do the same job, minus the additives and stabilisers.

I’m not saying avoid them completely, and I’m not saying they’re all bad. But it’s worth asking whether you need that high-protein snack, or whether a simpler version would do the trick.

Then there is the low-fat trap. I grew up in the 90s, so of course I thought reduced fat equalled healthy. I grew up genuinely terrified of butter, it felt naughty, the kind of thing that just clogged the arteries by looking at it. So instead, spent most of my life slathering margarine on toast, convinced I was making the better choice. Yet now I realise that those golden spreads were a blend of refined oils, emulsifiers, preservatives, colours and flavourings to make them spreadable and vaguely butter-like. A nutrition coach I spoke to put it perfectly: “Fat carries flavour. Strip it out, you’ve got to replace it with something.” Usually that something is sugar, gums, or additives.

Plant-based swaps weren’t the easy win I expected either. Quorn mince, soy sausages, on paper they looked amazing: lower in fat, better for the planet. But many are ultra-processed cocktails of rehydrated soya, stabilisers and flavourings. Not terrible, but not the nourishing “real food” I imagined, either. And with the UK meat-free market booming (it’s now worth more than £620 million) these products are everywhere. The issue? Some vegan sausages contain as much salt as the pork versions they’re replacing. Not exactly the halo food I thought I was eating.

Flip over a packet of your favourite vegan burgers and you might find ingredients like methylcellulose (used to give it that juicy, meat-like texture) or carrageenan (added for mouthfeel). These don’t make them evil by any means, but it’s a reminder that it’s not the same as cooking lentils or tipping a great jar of beans into a pan (Bold Bean Co. are my go-to).

So naturally, I panicked and instead tried to give up UPFs completely. Honestly? Exhausting. Cooking from scratch every night, never grabbing a quick snack… it sucked the joy out of eating. And the truth is, not every UPF is terrible. Baked beans, Marmite, oat milk – all technically UPFs, all pretty useful. The problem isn’t that they exist; it’s how quickly they end up dominating your diet when you’re trying to be “healthy.”

So, in the last year I made some simple swaps. Instead of protein drinks or fortified cereals for breakfast, I went back to overnight oats or eggs. Instead of fruit-flavoured low-fat yoghurt, I chose plain Greek with a drizzle of honey. Instead of plant-based burgers and calorie controlled ready meals when I couldn’t be bothered to cook, I actually made the effort to batch cook just a least one, nourishing meal and freeze it for emergencies. Nothing extreme, just small shifts towards foods that actually made me feel full and energised.

That’s not to say I’ve sworn off UPFs forever (life’s way too busy for that). I still keep a protein yoghurt or two in the fridge for emergencies, I’m still partial to the taste of Red Bull Zero and biscuits and crisps are an odd treat. But real butter and full-fat milk are back in my diet and I’ve stopped using time as an excuse to eat conveniently. The real win? Learning that healthy eating doesn’t have to mean a trolley full of factory-made products with shiny buzzwords. Sometimes the simplest things – eggs, beans, fruit, veg – do a much better job, even if it does require a little bit more effort.