Simple habit could halve your ultra-processed food intake

In Britain, we love snacks. Pastries with our coffee, biscuits with our tea, a packet of crisps before lunch, and a 3pm sweet treat to tide us through to dinner are just a handful of the between-meal moments that have formed a regular part of our common dietary schedule.

- Lydia Spencer-Elliott, The Independent

On average, we snack 2.3 times per day, every day. In fact, the UK snack market has grown to such an extent that it was valued at more than £3bn in 2094, with chocolate-covered biscuits or cookies singled out as Britain's bestseller. It brings me absolutely no joy to tell you this, but this habit is killing us quicker. Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) such as biscuits, sweets, chocolate, crisps, ice cream, cakes and pastries have been linked to harm in every major organ system of the human body, according to the world’s largest review published this week in The Lancet.

They're associated with an increased risk of numerous health conditions, including obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and depression — and make up a huge 56 per cent of Britain's shopping basket, which is higher than most other European countries, including Italy, Cyprus, Greece and Portugal. While eating between meals can help regulate blood sugar and prevent overeating during breakfast, lunch and dinner, the problem is that many UPFs are engineered for hyper-palatability, which leaves us wanting more and more, causing us to overeat.

“You go into a high street or a corner shop, and trying to get a healthy snack is near impossible,”