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.
Caring for and feeding a person other than yourself, every single day for multiple meals, for multiple years, is not a one-off simple-solution task. Efficiency is key, and sadly those UPF don't need preparation, spoil or need refrigeration or cooking, and above all are engineered to taste great. Top marks for food technology!
I have a diet entirely free of ultra-processed foods.
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.
Avoiding it altogether? Sure, that may be unrealistic. Minimizing it to a large degree? Definitely doable (we do it with 2 school age kids, or at least we think we do). But! it has to be a priority, and it takes time and money (we're not wealthy but we prioritize it in our spending and cut back on other things).
There’s a reason we have words that are stronger than “avoid” as far as ever encountering something at all. Avoiding your annoying cousin who always asks for money doesn’t mean you have to move to Kenya or Mars, or make his tragic death look like an accident. Just don’t hang out where he does and ask questions before family get together.
I mean technically if he’s not moving it’s easy to “avoid” him. But as I said these things are not usually called avoiding, and some of them are unethical or illegal.
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.
Avoiding ultra-processed food is completely realistic.
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.
Is this a submarine article for food corps or what?
Yes, it's hard work to make food by hand, but for fucks sake, our ancestors did it for generations, without any modern appliances or temperature controlled ovens.
This article was so long, I don't even know the point was. Is she trying to say that UPF is not so bad? That you should just give in? At the end of the day it just comes down to priorities. There is almost nothing more important than what goes into a child's developing body. Maybe skip some of the after school activities and cook with them instead.
Ancestors didn't have the hyper-scheduled calendar controlled lives of two working professionals plus child rearing. Something has to give in such situations.
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.
I think you can do a whole lot better than the lunch in the opening paragraph pretty easily.
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.
> Is this a submarine article for food corps or what?
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?
Sure looks like it. Expect more of this ultra processed "news" propaganda with all of the partisan hack trad and social media consolidation out to manufacture consent of low information scrolling consumers who then try to gaslight the sane into believing nonsense.
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.
Lot of finger pointing at the author in this thread. I googled her and found this article from nine months earlier (I think), complaining that her husband does jack shit around the house: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/fair-play-...
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.
Caring for and feeding a person other than yourself, every single day for multiple meals, for multiple years, is not a one-off simple-solution task. Efficiency is key, and sadly those UPF don't need preparation, spoil or need refrigeration or cooking, and above all are engineered to taste great. Top marks for food technology!
I have a diet entirely free of ultra-processed foods.
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.
For the US probably. All others do have different goals though
Avoiding it altogether? Sure, that may be unrealistic. Minimizing it to a large degree? Definitely doable (we do it with 2 school age kids, or at least we think we do). But! it has to be a priority, and it takes time and money (we're not wealthy but we prioritize it in our spending and cut back on other things).
There’s a reason we have words that are stronger than “avoid” as far as ever encountering something at all. Avoiding your annoying cousin who always asks for money doesn’t mean you have to move to Kenya or Mars, or make his tragic death look like an accident. Just don’t hang out where he does and ask questions before family get together.
> ... or make his tragic death look like an accident.
That part seems kinda important if you want to stay out of jail!
I mean technically if he’s not moving it’s easy to “avoid” him. But as I said these things are not usually called avoiding, and some of them are unethical or illegal.
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.
Avoiding ultra-processed food is completely realistic.
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.
Is this a submarine article for food corps or what? Yes, it's hard work to make food by hand, but for fucks sake, our ancestors did it for generations, without any modern appliances or temperature controlled ovens. This article was so long, I don't even know the point was. Is she trying to say that UPF is not so bad? That you should just give in? At the end of the day it just comes down to priorities. There is almost nothing more important than what goes into a child's developing body. Maybe skip some of the after school activities and cook with them instead.
Ancestors didn't have the hyper-scheduled calendar controlled lives of two working professionals plus child rearing. Something has to give in such situations.
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.
I think you can do a whole lot better than the lunch in the opening paragraph pretty easily.
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.
> Is this a submarine article for food corps or what?
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?
Sure looks like it. Expect more of this ultra processed "news" propaganda with all of the partisan hack trad and social media consolidation out to manufacture consent of low information scrolling consumers who then try to gaslight the sane into believing nonsense.
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.