'I've banned certain foods in our home - I was astounded by supermarket ingredient lists'

A mum of three has shared how she’s banished from her family’s diet following a terrifying health scare. Daisy Asaf, 34, from Kent, primarily feeds her children whole foods and homemade snacks after realising packaged items she was feeding them every day were laced with hidden.

Daisy, a mum to two sons, aged 10 and nine, along with a three-year-old daughter, changed her shopping habits after one of her sons was misdiagnosed with a rare disease. In 2022,, a former dancer, and her husband, who runs his own business, to expect the worst, only to be told a few days later that it wasn’t as it seemed.

“I was in hysterics,” Daisy, 34, told the . “I was in bed crying for two days.” Her son, who is still monitored, recovered after minor surgery. However Daisy suffered immense health anxiety after the ordeal, and wanted to take matters into her own hands.

She overhauled the family’s diet, ditching everything from high-sugar cereals to even the type of bread they ate.

While Daisy admits her household isn’t entirely “toxic-free” as she has slowly made changes over the past few years, including not allowing her children Calpol when they’re sick due to the sugar content. She’s now on a mission to raise awareness for other parents about what ingredients are lurking in packets that could be harmful to their children’s health.

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“Once I’d been through the trauma with my son, I was like, ‘something has got to change now.’ It hit me like a ton of bricks. You hear so much about people getting cancer, at all ages, it’s chronic. If you don’t know someone who has had it, your friend does,” Daisy said.

“It petrifies me. I asked myself why has it escalated so much? Is it what we’re eating? Is it what we’re using in our homes? All these chemicals.

“I grew up in an era when both parents worked. Everything was convenient, and we ate processed foods. But then I think back to my nan’s era, and everything was made from scratch. She grew her own vegetables and used natural remedies.

“Now we just grab whatever is on the shelf, everyone is burnt out, everyone is working flat out to afford to live. That’s the way the has gone, but I’m trying to get back to basics.”

New analysis now suggests that thousands of deaths per year in the UK may be linked to the consumption of UPFs. UPFs have been linked previously to poor health, including an increased risk of obesity, heart disease, cancer and early death.

Examples of UPFs include processed meats, crisps, mass-produced bread, some breakfast cereals, biscuits and fizzy drinks. However, some experts say it is not clear why UPFs are linked to poor health and question whether this is because of processing or because people are opting for foods high in fat, sugar and salt rather than more nutritious options.

In the new study, published on Monday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, experts call on governments to issue dietary recommendations aimed at cutting consumption of UPFs. The study doesn't surprise Daisy in the slightest.

“As my kids were growing up, I didn’t think once about what they were eating,” Daisy admitted. “I fed them fruit and vegetables, I knew that was healthy, but I just trusted that everything on the shelves was fine.

“It goes through testing, a regulation system, so I thought it would be fine. It never crossed my mind, you’re just conditioned to buy that sort of thing, like sugary cereals, because we’ve been brought up on it. But then I started reading ingredient labels and thought there are so many that I just don’t understand, and I don’t know what they are.”

She added: “Why does a sandwich have E-numbers in it? If I can't pronounce an ingredient or if I don't have that ingredient in my cupboard, I don't buy it." Daisy started baking her own bread or buying it fresh from her bakery after noticing mass-produced bread contained seed oils and preservatives.

She’s swapped her spreadable butter to a traditional block of butter she keeps in a butter dish, her milk to Jersey milk such as Graham's Gold Top, and her bread to minimal ingredients such as Jason’s Sourdough. She’ll only buy wraps from the brand Crosta and Mollica and uses Heinz’s pasta sauces.

But it comes at a cost. Daisy will spend a whopping £250 a week on food but says she prioritises buying better ingredients, including organic meat and vegetables, and cuts back in other areas.

While she shares videos of her food shops on her influencer account daisyasaf_, she admits she “isn’t perfect” and she still lets her children have a packet of crisps and chocolate bar in their school lunch boxes.

“We’re not completely ultraprocessed-free,” she revealed. “I don’t want my children to be limited and I don’t want them to feel left out. If other kids are having a McDonald’s, I won’t say they’re not allowed, but I feel less guilty because I know what I’m giving them at home is healthy.

“They’ve become more aware of their choices too. My son will tell me if something at school had in it for example, or it was good as it had flax seeds. It’s moments like that when I feel like I’m winning.

“They now don’t ask for things like Skittles, they know to make better choices. That’s all I really wanted to create. My eldest is going to secondary school in September and I never wanted to punish my children as I don’t want to create a negative relationship with food.

“But he’s aware of the balance between what’s healthy and what’s ultra-processed, and it’s about breaking that mould. He is less hyperactive now, and they seem to be fuller for longer now that they’re eating proper food.”

Daisy ensures her kids start their days with homemade pancakes with fruit or eggs on toast and that they always end their day with a homecooked dinner. They prefer to snack on yoghurt and fruit rather than sweets and chocolate, she says.

The mum advises other parents to start with small tweaks in their supermarket shops to avoid getting “overwhelmed”, which is how she first found it after becoming obsessed with reading ingredients lists. “Start small with something like getting your bread fresh from the bakery,” she advised.

The full-time mum then recommends setting aside three hours a week to focus on meal prep and batch cooking and insists this will save busy parents time in the long run. She even makes her own chicken nuggets, which she freezes for evenings when she knows they will need something quick and easy.

“I feel more in control of their health now,” Daisy said. “I am feeding them better ingredients, and I sneak things into their meals that I know are good for them - turmeric, ginger, garlic, bone broth.

“Food is medicine at the end of the day and I know these ingredients will boost their immune system and aid their recovery when they do get ill. I don’t feel as frightened anymore, knowing what I know and what I can do.

“I don’t want my videos to scare people, I’m not saying ‘you can’t eat this or you’ll get cancer’ but I just want people to be aware of UPFs as they might not realise just how common they are.”

Monday's study looked at data from eight countries around the world and found UPFs reached 53% of people’s energy intake in the UK – the second highest in the study after 55% in the US. Premature deaths attributable to UPFs ranged from 4% of premature deaths in lower consumption settings, such as , up to 14% of premature deaths in the UK and US, according to their mathematical modelling.

The researchers suggested that in 2018/19, some 17,781 premature deaths in the UK could have been linked to UPFs, according to their model.

Lead investigator of the study Eduardo Nilson, from the scientific body the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Brazil, said: “UPFs affect health beyond the individual impact of high content of critical nutrients (sodium, trans fats, and sugar) because of the changes in the foods during industrial processing and the use of artificial ingredients, including colourants, artificial flavours and sweeteners, emulsifiers, and many other additives and processing aids, so assessing deaths from all causes associated with UPF consumption allows an overall estimate of the effect of industrial food processing on health.”

Stephen Burgess, statistician in the MRC Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge, said the study was observational and could not prove cause. “This type of research cannot prove that consumption of ultra-processed foods is harmful, but it does provide evidence linking consumption with poorer health outcomes,” he said.

“It is possible that the true causal risk factor is not ultra-processed foods, but a related risk factor such as better physical fitness – and ultra-processed foods is simply an innocent bystander. But when we see these associations replicated across many countries and cultures, it raises suspicion that ultra-processed foods may be more than a bystander.”