Ultra-processed foods (UPF) from baked goods and breakfast cereals to cured meats and condiments are linked to chronic disease, but are said to make up around 60 per cent of daily diets in the UK and US. This means that many of us are mostly eating food high in fat, salt and sugar as well as all kinds of additives, but possibly low in fibre and essential nutrients. This is a global problem and public health has been shafted by the big food manufacturers.
Could there be another way? M&S has responded to growing consumer concern about UPFs by launching a new product line called Only…Ingredients, which include cupboard staples like bread, cornflakes and tomato ketchup, along with sausages, burgers and meatballs. Each product has the number of ingredients, from three to eight, displayed clearly on the label on the front of the packet in large enough writing to read.
This feels like it could be a positive step, then, given the coverage of UPF-related issues. But specialist dietitian Nichola Ludlam-Raine, author of How Not to Eat Ultra-Processed (Ebury, £16.99), warns against the assumption that all UPF are bad, and that any minimally-processed foods are healthy just because they haven’t been messed around with.
“Overall, I am for simplifying foods and taking processed foods back from their ultra-processed nature,” she says. “There are some good products in the M&S range but I have noticed a lot of ‘health halos’, a lack of food fortification and sugar swaps. I hope it doesn’t scaremonger and give the advice we should [never] have more than five ingredients in a product.”
By “health halo”, Ludlam-Raine means products that appear healthy to consumers by virtue of being simpler – without necessarily being a genuinely healthy food. The oat milk drink in the M&S range, for example, contains just water, oats and salt (oat milks have come under fire for being UPF). But Ludlam
Raine says that other oat milk brands contain more ingredients due to fortification, where calcium, and sometimes also B12, B2 vitamins and iodine are added for their health benefits.
As a result, she wouldn’t recommend this as a dairy replacement for children, and would advise adults that they may need to take a calcium supplement if they switch to it.
The range might be useful if you’re privileged enough to shop in M&S and don’t have any food allergies, she says, but could demonise products needed to keep people safe. Preservatives exist for food safety. There are additives in gluten-free products to make them palatable.
Products in M&S’s new UPF-free range“The biggest concern I’ve got is regarding the sausages, meatballs and burgers,” says Ludlam-Raine. “It’s really positive they’re made with a handful of ingredients, almost as if you’ve made them at home, but they’re still processed red meats, which we shouldn’t be eating in large amounts.” The government guideline is no more than 70g a day, as it can contribute to bowel cancer and heart disease, but often people think this means steak and forget about all the mince and pork they are eating.
“Portion size and frequency matter,” says Ludlam-Raine. “There is no such thing as good and bad foods, only good and bad diets”. And “if you can’t afford this range, it’s all right,” she says, pointing out that most of us don’t do our main shop at M&S. “You don’t need these products to have a healthy diet.”
The taste test
When I’m asked to taste test these products, I assume they will all taste good. Surely with few ingredients, no UPFs, no traces of preservatives, flavourings or emulsifiers, these products will taste as food should? It’s really exciting to see a big retailer like M&S prove they can produce non-UPF products at scale.
They are, of course, more expensive than other M&S options, as well as most products from other supermarkets, but it looks like they’re selling well. Some products that were listed as in stock online have sold out by the time I arrive in the store mid-morning, and sales assistants confirm they’d been on the shelves earlier.
The only product I wasn’t able to try was the baked beans, which will arrive on shelves at the end of the month. Although Ludlam-Raine is slightly puzzled about their inclusion and stresses that any kind of baked beans, even the cheapest tins, are not associated with ill health. “Baked beans aren’t on my hit list and they’re not a hyper-palatable food high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS – meaning you’re likely to consume more of something). There’s less sugar in these than in M&S’s existing beans, but they weren’t known as a UPF anyway.”
I scored each product for taste, not health, with the nutrition commentary added in each write-up.
Tomato Ketchup (Only 8 Ingredients), £2.25/250ml
5/5
Often in the firing line as a product high in salt and sugar, it’s no surprise M&S has included a reformulation in this new line. My daughter reports a “funny aftertaste” compared to the Co-op bottle we have in the fridge. When I try, I discover this is a welcome acidic tang at the end of a rich, textured, tomatoey ketchup that I’d be happy to be served in a pub as homemade, which is reflected in the price.
The M&S version contains far more tomatoes, 281g per 100g of finished product, compared to 167g in the Co-Op sauce and 154g in Heinz.
Ludlam-Raine, however, points out that this is one of those products that wears a health halo but is very similar in formulation to most ketchups. “I compared it with Heinz,” she says. “It’s not that different but they’ve swapped the sugar for agave syrup. Sugar is sugar; just because it sounds fancy, it doesn’t mean you can have it in copious amounts.” The M&S, Co-Op and Heinz ketchups contain, respectively, 23.9g, 22g and 22.8g of sugar per 100g.
Dark Chocolate Date Bar (Only 4 Ingredients), £1.75/50g
2/5
I was really keen to find one of the three chocolate bars in the range and finally swooped on the last one in the sandwich area. At 50g, it feels quite small for the price, though all chocolate is expensive at the moment.
I am someone who messes about making date, choc and nut bars at home and expected to like this one, but I don’t love the texture – it is grainy – and I won’t buy it again. My husband doesn’t like it at all.
My favourite snacks are Medjool dates and dark chocolate, and I’ll stick to them in future. Date paste and chocolate are both high in sugar, though dark chocolate is lower than milk chocolate, but contains other nutrients such as fibre and polyphenols. I don’t eat chocolate for health anyway; I eat it because I want to.
Olive Oil Mayonnaise (Only 6 Ingredients), £4.50/250g
5/5
Unsurprisingly expensive given the olive oil content and absolutely delicious. I could eat this by the spoonful, though Ludlam-Raine warns that mayonnaise isn’t the kind of thing we eat in huge quantities, regardless, and that the shorter shelf life – four weeks compared to three months up on products with preservatives – might make us eat more, or lead to food wastage.
I usually buy Tracklements, which is similarly UPF-free but made with sunflower oil and cheaper, around £3/200g, as a result.
4 White Rolls (Only 5 Ingredients), £2/300g
4/5
Ludlam-Raine highlights the wholegrain bread in the range as a great choice, as there are so many supermarket breads made with “red flag” emulsifiers. I am too slow to get some but buy these white rolls which are fluffy and delicious but low in fibre. Interestingly, they do contain some fortification, which they’ve managed to sneak into the “5” ingredients list because the added calcium, iron, B3 and B1 is in the wheatflour.
Multigrain Hoops (Only 5 Ingredients), £2.50/300g
0/5
A Cheerio’s dupe, which, unsurprisingly, does not pass muster with the two children we test it on, even though they usually eat Weetabix, Bran Flakes and porridge and should have been delighted to be presented with a bowl of faux Cheerios. I test alongside the Bear Alpha Bites cereal, which boasts just six ingredients and is sweetened with coconut blossom nectar, while the M&S hoops contain date syrup. The Bear cereal does have a bit of tasty sweetness and a nice chewy texture.
The hoops are devoid of flavour and don’t even absorb the milk as cardboard at least would. I won’t feed these to anyone again and donate my bowl to the furry dustbin, feeling terrible as I hate food waste, and awful for the friend who I met in-store and also bought a packet.
The existing M&S Multigrain Hoops, at £1.20 for 375g, are under half the price and contain twice the amount of fibre (8.5g compared to 4.3g in Only…Ingredients hoops) as well as some fortification, less fat (2.6g to 3.3g) but more sugar (16.4g to 3.8g).
Bran flakes (Only 3 Ingredients), £2.50/300g
4/5
These do pass the under-10s test and my daughter is happy to eat them as a Bran Flakes substitute. Made from only wholegrain wheat, barley malt extract and sea salt, they’re sugar-free compared to branded and supermarket versions.
“It’s great that it’s wholegrain, but it’s not fortified with nutrients as other ranges are,” says Ludlam-Raine. “It isn’t a product that I’d recommend for children or people with other dietary needs. I’d only recommend it for people who have a really good diet and don’t need fortification. I would much rather my kids have Weetabix, which has a little bit of added sugar but is fortified.”
She also points out the value of fortification for women. “Food fortification is a good thing and cereals are great for people with on-the-go busy lives. For example, most pregnancies are unplanned so women won’t be taking folic acid supplements.”
The standard M&S Bran Flakes cost £1 for 500g.
Avocado Oil Crisps, £3.90/125g
5/5
Anything including avocado oil reminds me of that ridiculous Brooklyn Beckham video in which he used an entire bottle of the expensive oil to fry a bit of chicken. I’m all for a posh crisp, however, and these golden crisps with sea salt remind me of £5 bags of Torres. I can’t stand the flavourings on typical crisps and always choose plain or S&V anyway, but I’m not sure the health benefits of these three-ingredient crisps will have any effect as I pair them with my favourite three-ingredient cocktail.
“It’s an artisan product and fine if you want to serve it on a Friday, but it’s still a crisp and high in fat, salt and calories,” says Ludlam-Raine.
12 Pork Chipolatas and 6 Pork Sausages (Only 6 Ingredients), £4/400g
4/5
All sausages are not equal, but as expected, I enjoy both of these 92 per cent pork products. Nitrates, used in meat processing, have come to the fore in recent years as one of the main problems with diets high in red meat, and these are both nitrate-free. But Ludlam-Raine points out that they are still red meat, whose dietary dangers aren’t only caused by nitrates. M&S outdoor bred pork sausages (75 per cent pork) cost £2.60 for 454g, while M&S Collection sausages cost £4 for 400g.
24 British Beef Meatballs (Only 3 Ingredients), £7/600g
3/5
I’m more interested in where the beef is from than how many ingredients are in these meatballs, and M&S says its meat can always be traced back to the farm and animal it came from. Unfortunately, I think they’ve missed a trick with these meatballs.
They’re undeniably beefy, juicy and tasty, and a useful thing to have in the freezer, but they’re only seasoned with salt and pepper and I tend to think the beauty of meatballs lies in what’s added, not what’s taken out, from stretching the meat with breadcrumbs, cheese or veg to going big on all kinds of seasonings and flavours like chilli and cumin or sage and lemon. But of course, this would upend M&S’s ability to keep the ingredient count to a minimum. For price comparison, M&S Select Farms British 12 Beef Meatballs cost £4 for 300g.
I’m looking forward to seeing the range expand, hopefully to include fish fingers and chicken nuggets.
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