A strange thing happens when you give up UPFs, which is that you also incidentally cut out a lot of sugar. I’d usually have a cookie in the evening while watching The Hills, or grab a Coke for a midday caffeine hit. Without as much sugar, I became desperate for it, spooning great globules of honey in my herbal tea (honey is processed, just not ultra-processed) and mainlining bananas as if they were an addictive drug. “Please, can I have one of your chewy vitamin supplements?” I asked my grandmother over the weekend, who snatched them away because they contain something called “sodium citrate” and also “carnauba wax”, which is used for polishing shoes.
Days three to five
My sugar cravings started to die down around day three (not because I wasn’t eating sugar, but because I discovered that dark chocolate wasn’t a UPF, and therefore could get my fix that way). If you’re interested in what else I was eating, it was mainly a lot of rice, vegetables, fish, meat and…