Ultra Processed People
- Karolina Manns
- Mar 24
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 5
Trying to read the book by Chris van Tulleken and I have to say I’m struggling with it. Mostly because I cannot relate to it. Like nothing at all.
The author talks about the correlation between poverty and the consumption of the ultra-processed foods and I’m a little bit puzzled. I see a lot of people driving to McDonalds in very fancy cars. Nothing poor there.
I spent my formative years in a place which some people would call a Third World Country. In fact, on a couple of occasions, I was asked me: “Where is it?”.
And yet, even though we were pretty poor when I was growing up, we always had homemade food served at all times. Granted, we had a lot of potatoes. Especially mashed potatoes. I don’t think I had mashed potatoes for the last 30 years. I had all the mushiness as a kid, and I swear there must be a limit on how much one can eat in a lifetime. I can make you the most delicious Shepherd’s Pie but please don’t make me eat it.
And to add insult to the injury, I had to peel these bloody potatoes every time I came home from school because back in the day children had chores. No peeled potatoes, no dinner.
We also had a lot of kasza (kasha) and its multitude of varieties: jęczmienna, perlowa, gryczana. In English it’s called barley, pearl barley or buckwheat. Pearl barley is the cheapest grain you can find, and it takes 15 min to boil. Probably faster if you pre-soak it the night before. You can cook it in batch and store it for a week in the fridge.
My grandmother Irena was French, so we often ate a dish (very ahead of its time in my country) called Pastasciutta which literally means “dry pasta”. "Pasta" is actually a short for "Pastasciutta". She’d always make it with fresh tomatoes in the summertime or tomato concentrate when the former weren’t available. Frying onion and garlic while at the same time boiling pasta takes 15 min. Add another 5 to assemble it.
We also ate a lot of kanapki which are the open-type sandwiches. Fresh bread, just like kasza (no, not potatoes, they were introduced to Poland mid-1600s from Latin America) is a staple in my country.
And when I talk about bread, I mean the one that you buy from the bakery every day in the morning.
On most days if you tried to buy bread later on during the day, the shelves were empty. No, not because they didn’t make enough of it, but because by the evening the bread was stale, and by next day it was so hard you could use it as a murder weapon. By which point we’d grate it and make homemade breadcrumbs. Nothing went to waste.
As much as I love a homemade kanapka (open sandwich), I do not eat bought bread. And I’m talking here about that ‘bread’ that you can buy wrapped in plastic. I remember, they introduced it to my country when I was at the end of high school. We call it: ‘bread for toasting’. I cannot imagine eating it ‘raw’.
So, until I came to the UK, I didn’t know you actually could eat it without toasting it. To be honest, 22 years later, I am still struggling with this concept. All these pre-packaged sandwiches with raw bread that has a texture, unless toasted till ultra crispy and dry, resembling a sponge one uses for insulating windows in winter.
And, if push came to shove, and you really REALLY didn’t have time to peel your potatoes for dinner, you’d eat at a place called ‘The Milk Bar’. The self-service canteens, so named because they serve mainly (though not exclusively) dairy dishes, were born in the late 19th century, when meat was a pricey treat.
To be honest, everyone ate – and still do – at the Milk Bar. Not just the working class: the students, the poor intelligentsia, everyone. It had homemade food, unpretentious atmosphere and the prices were low, thanks to government subsidies.
Some offer meals to the jobless and homeless, paid for by social security, the poor and the well-off rub elbows.[i] I took my husband to eat at a Milk Bar. We had the best homemade naleśniki (French pancakes) with mushroom & cabbage. Yum!
In the West, the government – instead of subsidising good and healthy homestyle food for those who want to eat well but not spend much – throws money away into animal agriculture that is not sustainable, and both not profitable for the farmers (hence the subsidies) and not affordable for the consumer (if the prices were not tempered by the subsidies).
And so, instead of having a culture of homestyle delicious albeit simple food, we gorge on something that vaguely resembles food.
We also see money-not-well-spent by the government that we apparently elected (even though the majority of the populous didn’t bother to go and vote) splashed on unsustainable (both from the economy and health perspective) and inedible stuff that is making us overweight and sick.
I think I’d rather eat the bloody mashed potatoes.
Or, if I’m too lazy to peel, I’ll have a jacket potato instead!
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