Seems like the more boring but more real story here is that this mom is really struggling to hold her career together and give her kids the care she clearly wishes she could because her husband is being lazy. To the haters in the thread: I think this article can be read as "avoiding UPFs is completely unrealistic for authors trying to establish themselves while functionally raising a baby and a toddler by themselves". Which, even as a perpetual proponent of the anti-UPF book "Ultra-Processed People," I kind of understand.
I get a lot of pride and satisfaction from being an involved dad. I do almost all of the cleaning, a fair amount of cooking, and probably 2/3 of the missing-work-because-no-childcare (and I try to put in a good amount of solo weekend time, to let my spouse catch up on work). A valuable life lesson I learned in Boy Scouts: if you're not doing about twice as much work as you think is fair, you're probably not doing enough.
It's a question of priorities. If she really wanted to avoid them she would take the time to do so, even if that means working less.
What's unrealistic is expecting everyone to have the drive to do what's necessary to avoid ultra-processed food.
Tangentially, kids will always want to eat what everyone else is eating. If you start feeding them home cooked Golden fish or whatever, people at school are going to judge them, your kids will feel excluded because they won't be eating the same things as everyone else, and they'll end up resenting you somewhat.
For me the challenge here is really how to give your kids healthy food while also not excluding them from the normal kid experience, which, for better or worse, is going to include consuming ultra-processed until the day we have proper regulations.
Except health safety?
That part seems kinda important if you want to stay out of jail!
In fact “avoid” is typically more of a low to moderate effort attempt at not encountering something.
“Avoid flying into the black hole.” Is basically top-shelf British humor.
Not only have I done this for almost a decade, given how high food prices are now, I'm surprised normal people can even afford the Standard American Diet (SAD). Cheapest and highest nutrition food is just buying normal everyday boring raw meat and raw vegs, put some spices on it, tada, food.
In Trump's America, dumping the silly garbage brands is the best thing you can do.
Not sure why you put Trump here - it wasnt started with him and while his governance does make some efforts in the correct direction, I doubt they can achieve much fighting Big Food.
Biden did neither of these things.
Its been relatively stable under the current one.
entropyie•3mo ago
phil21•3mo ago
Priorities are 100% it. My parents were able to raise me on a single income where any processed foods were a special treat maybe once per quarter. We were quite poor compared to our peers, and a lot of our veggies came directly from our own urban garden. Staples in bulk from the food co-op in 50lb bags, and at least a few hours per day was spent on meal prep from base ingredients.
There is no way you are getting that out of the general population these days without wholesale changes to the entire economy. We are built to keep every working adult busy 24x7.
That's before you get into the inanity (or insanity if you prefer) of social expectations these days re: child rearing.
tjr•3mo ago
It need not be all-or-nothing. I've been improving my diet for 10 years, as I started to learn more about nutrition.
Instead of a Crustable sandwich, get some turkey at the deli counter and some prepackaged whole wheat bread. Still processed, but better. Maybe after a while, move to getting bread from some whole food bakery or something. If you don't have time or money to jump all in, start taking steps.
add-sub-mul-div•3mo ago
Read it and make a case about whether it is or isn't, this is your idea. Is there merit to it, or does it only dovetail with the same convenient demonization of a habit you can vaguely ascribe to worse parents or poorer people?
burnt-resistor•3mo ago
No one with a functioning brain believes for a second that HFCS-laden Mt Dew Code Red or Flamin' Hot Doritos Max XXXX Blast Ultra are health food.