We Spent Five Years Cutting Ultra-Processed Foods From Our Diet — Here's the Honest Truth

The Saturday Morning Shift

Our weekends look completely different than they used to. Rather than pushing a cart through the aisles of a conventional supermarket, I now spend Saturday mornings at a local farmers' market in San Diego, filling bags with fresh fish, quality cuts of meat, seasonal fruits, artisan cheeses, and berries — enough to sustain a household of four for the week ahead.

It's a fulfilling routine, but it isn't a budget-friendly one. Our weekly grocery bill has climbed considerably since we first made the decision, five years ago, to significantly reduce ultra-processed foods (UPFs) from our family's diet.

What Sparked the Change

Back in 2021, I went down a rabbit hole researching how ultra-processed foods are designed, manufactured, and sold to consumers. Books like Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss pulled back the curtain on the food industry, exposing the deliberate engineering behind products built to be irresistible. I learned how food scientists craft flavors that override our natural sense of fullness — and how consistent consumption of these highly engineered products may carry serious long-term health risks.

The scientific community has continued to build on this concern. In 2025, The Lancet published a series of meta-analyses confirming that diets heavily reliant on UPFs for caloric intake are linked to increased risk of chronic disease and higher overall energy consumption. Beyond personal health, researchers have also connected UPF production and consumption to the erosion of traditional food cultures, environmental harm, and the consolidation of power among large food corporations.

Something about all of it felt deeply wrong — like a system designed to profit from our dependence rather than support our well-being.

Starting From Scratch

Prior to this shift, our family's meals were functional but unremarkable. We leaned heavily on canned goods and pre-prepared supermarket items. We cooked, but not adventurously.

We made a deliberate decision to cook more meals from basic ingredients. It started small — homemade chicken stock, then homemade yogurt, then ice cream churned in a hand-me-down machine. Six years into this journey, frozen pizzas and cartons of liquid stock have completely disappeared from our shopping list. Frozen chicken tenders, fish sticks, and store-bought ice cream made their last appearances in our home in 2023.

The Financial Reality: What the Numbers Actually Show

I began tracking our family's grocery spending in 2019. While I didn't set out to specifically monitor UPF expenditure, the data reveals clear trends over time.

Where We Spent Less

Several categories dropped dramatically as we shifted away from processed products:

• Cereal: $158.63 in 2021 fell to just $34.34 in 2025
• Yogurt: $260.29 in 2021 shrank to $24.27 in 2025 after we began making our own
• Protein bars: A $261.04 habit in 2021 dropped to zero
• Frozen chicken tenders: After peaking at $159.76 in 2020, we haven't purchased them in two years

Where We Spent More

However, spending increased significantly in other areas as we replaced processed products with whole ingredients:

• Butter: More than quadrupled between 2021 and 2025, reaching $234.22
• Sugar: Rose from $9.47 to $83.10 as home baking became a regular activity
• Fruits and vegetables: The most dramatic increase — from $2,578.32 in 2021 to $5,706.36 in 2025

Our meat spending also fluctuated considerably. In 2021, we began purchasing humanely raised meat from farms practicing regenerative agriculture, spending nearly $2,500 on raw beef and chicken alone. We later pulled that figure back to around $1,000 annually by incorporating more dried beans and plant-based proteins into our meals.

The Bottom Line

The overall numbers are striking. In 2019, our family spent $6,213.95 on groceries for the year. By 2025, that figure had grown to $15,531.60 — the highest total in seven years of careful tracking.

To be fair, this comparison isn't entirely straightforward. Our family added a member in 2021. General food inflation in the US was running at 2–3% in 2025, with cumulative price increases of roughly 30% since 2019. We also made a conscious choice to purchase higher-quality and organic ingredients, which command a premium. And over these years, we dramatically reduced how often we dined out, meaning far more meals were prepared — and paid for — at home.

The Hidden Cost Nobody Talks About: Time

Beyond the financial investment, the most demanding aspect of reducing UPF consumption has been the sheer amount of time it requires. Cooking a meal entirely from scratch can consume hours of preparation, and that's before factoring in the effort involved in sourcing quality ingredients from farmers' markets, specialty butchers, or local farms.

As a stay-at-home parent, I have a degree of scheduling flexibility that many people simply don't have. A working parent juggling a full-time job, childcare, and household responsibilities faces an entirely different set of constraints. Expecting everyone to replicate this lifestyle without acknowledging those barriers would be both unrealistic and unfair.

Experts Weigh In on the Bigger Picture

Food policy advocates and researchers are quick to acknowledge the complexity of this issue.

Bettina Elias Siegel, a food policy advocate and author of Kid Food, puts it plainly: "The research shows a general correlation between high UPF consumption and poor health. At the same time, we have to remember that UPFs are affordable, accessible and time-saving, which makes them a necessity for many families."

Priya Fielding-Singh, a sociologist and author of How the Other Half Eats, whose research centers on food access and equity, describes a food environment that essentially defaults to ultra-processed options: "Our entire food environment encourages — and in many ways defaults to — their consumption."

Fielding-Singh also points to the compounding pressures facing American families in recent years. "Families — especially lower-income families — have always struggled to afford healthy food," she notes. "But now you're layering rising prices for healthier, more nutritious products on top of that. At the same time, you're seeing cuts and restrictions to SNAP benefits and eligibility. And more broadly, life in America has simply become more expensive over the past five years."

Life With Kids: Finding a Practical Balance

Our household has not achieved — nor do we aim for — total elimination of ultra-processed foods. With an eight-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son, our lives include birthday parties, school events, playdates, and children's menus on restaurant outings. Rigid purism isn't something we practice or promote.

Instead, we've developed flexible household guidelines. At birthday celebrations, the kids are welcome to enjoy one of each treat — one slice of cake, one juice box. At Halloween, they pick their favorite items from the full haul and donate the rest. It's a balanced approach that teaches mindful consumption without turning food into a source of anxiety or shame.

What Five Years Has Taught Us

This journey has been genuinely valuable, but it has also been expensive, labor-intensive, and demanding of time that not every family has. The decision to reduce ultra-processed foods is not simply a matter of willpower or personal choice — it intersects with income, access, time, cultural context, and the structural realities of modern life in America.

For those with the means and flexibility to make these changes, the rewards are real. For the millions of families who rely on affordable, convenient food to get through demanding days, judgment serves no purpose. The conversation about UPFs needs to remain honest about what real, lasting dietary change actually costs — in every sense of the word.