What is ultra processed food and why do you need to care?
Ultra processed is not just another food label
Every living thing on the planet is born ready to eat food appropriate to its species. Somehow humans manage to make food one of the most complicated and hotly debated topics out there. Conversations on food eating patterns and diets can trigger near zealous furor and crusader-like behavior in even the closest knit group of friends. This can make it challenging to wade through all the rhetoric and misinformation to find the kernels of truth about food and what types of dietary decisions might support your good health as an individual.
My goal today is to walk you through some terminology that can help you navigate the world of food with a little less stress. Let’s take a look at the NOVA food classification system and whether the term “ultra processed foods” adds to our understanding of how to choose healthy foods over foods that have detrimental impacts to your health and well being.
What is the NOVA food classification system?
The NOVA classification was created at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, to “group foods according to the extent and purpose of the processing they undergo”.
NOVA uses four categories:
Group 1: Unprocessed or minimally processed foods
Group 2: Processed culinary ingredients
Group 3: Processed foods
Group 4: Ultra-processed foods
The system illustrates increasing levels of food processing and additives. It starts in Group 1 with natural or near natural states of food. Nothing has been added to Group 1 foods, but some components may be removed in the process of making the food edible (for example, you shell nuts to eat them). This is followed closely by Group 2 where foods are seasoned, cooked or otherwise prepared for eating using the types of methods you would use in a household kitchen.
Groups 3 and 4 move into the realm of higher level industrial processing. Group 3 foods have some industrial type processing which usually includes adding salt, sugar or fat and creating stable products like canned fish, salted and roasted nuts, cured meat and so on. Group 3 foods still have very short ingredient lists, and they maty be processes done to Group 1 and Group 2 foods in order to extend the shelf life or usability of these foods.
The final classification is Group 4 where foods undergo extensive processing and may include ingredients that are fully derived (that is, they do not exist freely in nature, but exist because they have been created in a lab - e.g. high fructose corn syrup, stabilizers and some preservatives). Group 4 foods have been engineered and designed to maximize taste while minimizing costs. Many of the additives allow manufacturers to use poor quality and cheaper ingredients while creating a edible product with long shelf life.
You can read a brief 4 page description of the Nova system with food examples by clicking here.
Can you see the difference?
How does this work in practice? Let’s take tuna as an example of what the NOVA system looks like in the real world. Tuna may fall into any of the 4 groups depending on how much processing it has undergone:
Group 1: Fresh tuna fillet. Or flash frozen tuna that is vacuum sealed and stable while cold.
Group 2: Fresh tuna fillet broiled with spices and salt and served as part of the main course in your home or at a restaurant that does its own meal preparation.
Group 3: Commercially canned tuna packed in broth or water, with or without spices. This type of canned tuna has a very short ingredients list.
Group 4: A pre-packed tuna pasta dinner, frozen and ready to re-heat quickly at home. This dinner contains flavors, colors, preservatives, extracted and modified food substances, added salt, fat and sugar, and has been partially processed so that only minimal work is required at home. This tuna dinner is an industrial formulation designed to deliver convenience, taste, and pleasure while maximizing shelf life and profit for the manufacturing company.
By thinking through how foods fit into the 4 NOVA Groups, we can start to understand the health implications from eating foods you prepare yourself, or with minimal commercial help vs those that have been designed for convenience and profit first and health secondarily (if at all).
Why should you care if the food you eat is ultra processed?
I want to pause here and point out that food processing in and of itself is not the problem. For thousands of years humans have dried, smoked, salted, blanched, fermented, pasteurized and frozen foods to make them better to eat.
These types of basic (traditional) processing methods don’t radically alter the nutritional value of the final product in the same way that food additives, excess salt, excess sugar, excess fat, preservatives and other chemicals alter foods that have been designed for convenience first and foremost. Stay tuned here at The Naturalized Human for more about the Mind-Body-Food Connection and how our senses crave food preparation as part of our ancient way of being.
As if to add insult to injury, most ultra processed foods are also nutritionally unbalanced, contain too many calories, and delivering such a hit to our senses that the foods are addictive (think potato chips and how you cannot just eat one). So using the tuna dinner example above, the convenient warm-up and eat option may look and taste like a tuna, but it will be categorically deficient in nutrients compared to the homemade version. You can read about some of the studies comparing the health implications of ultra processed foods here.
As processed foods have filled up store shelves and largely replaced the habit of making food from scratch at home, we have seen the concomitant rise in obesity and preventable diseases like diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, obesity and many mental illnesses. Our obsession with convenience food is killing us (read more in Who Taught You to Eat?)
Industrialized foods that are designed to keep us coming back for more and eating to excess have taken over simple, healthy nutritious food that could be contributing to your physical and mental well being. Think about that as you stand in the grocery store deciding what’s for supper.
The question you need to be asking yourself, as you stand in the grocery aisle staring at the array of brands and choices, is how and why was this processed? If the goal of the product is to be fast, convenient, and/or super-sensory then it’s time to hit pause on the purchase. The REAL goal of the product then is to make profit for the company, not serve you nutritionally.
Trading FAST or TASTY for home-made or healthy is bad decision making that is going to cost you in the long run.
Here's the real test
You can untrain your body to crave ultra processed foods by reversing the way in which you became addicted: Just stop eating that crap! Give yourself fair recovery time. Something like 2 to 4 weeks is probably needed depending on how addicted you are to these hyper-tasty, salty, fatty, concocted foods. . . .give yourself a break and then go back and see if you notice a difference.
This is what happens for me: I stopped eating McDonalds (on principle because I don’t like the ethics of the company). I haven’t eaten that food in decades now. But I once had some fries because the group I was with decided to go to the drive through. Those few chips sat like rocks in my stomach. OUCH.
Covid also meant eating out less in my tiny town and travelling less. I used to LOVE Tim Horton’s muffins. LOVE them. But then some showed up as the snack at a meeting the other day. Score! I was expecting to enjoy that same taste sensation I remembered pre-Covid. Except instead I was shocked to find I didn’t enjoy the muffin at all!?! I could taste how ‘fake’ it was, having not had any bakery products in many months. Absence set me free from seeing a processed food as great.
It becomes blazingly clear that commercially prepared foods are not doing me (or anyone) any favors internally. It has also become very clear that as I eat more whole foods, such as snacking on real nuts (instead of “granola bars with nuts”), and eating foods like avocados, real cheeses, and whole fat products, I crave junk food less and less. My system no longer sends me the signals that make me eat impulsively. It makes a huge difference to my mood, wellbeing and weight.
Don’t trade convenience for wellbeing
Learning to identify the ultra processed foods in your life and working to substitute Groups 1-3 for those same foods is a game changer in terms of health, sleep, weight and mental acuity. The more I ratchet down into Group 1 and 2, the more vibrant I feel.
Here is a simple test for you to see if the same is true for you:
Start cutting out Group 4 foods (especially empty calorie snacks and sugary drinks)
Instead eat more whole foods and similar items that are Groups 1-3
See what happens next. How long does it take you to notice a difference you return to the Group 4 version?
A 2023 EU study reviewed 14 previous studies looking at how a mother’s diet affects child development, with a particular focus on the role of ultra processed foods (UPFs). This study concluded that a maternal diet high in ultra processed foods negatively impacted child cognitive development, while a Mediterranean diet was associated with better childhood scores for verbal and thinking functions. Observations do not prove causation, but this does give us reason to pause and consider how ultra processed foods are implicated in the current health crises being seen globally.
There will be those that argue the NOVA classification, isn’t “there yet” in order to cast doubt on the findings. But seriously, from my perspective this is just another example of how the for-profit food system isn’t interested in YOUR HEALTH. Money, profit, competitiveness in the market place . . . these are the priorities. The sooner you remember that while shopping, the better.
That also means the only person who truly cares about your health out there is you. The more you learn about the Mind-Body-Food Connections that support good health and well being, the less you will fall victim to the ultra sweet, ultra savory, ultra fast lures of convenience food that have you paying more now for food and then paying again with excessive health care costs later.
You have clear choices:
Learn to prepare, cook and preserve your own food.
Learn to grow your own food so that you have control beginning to end.
Support local and regional food systems that minimize handling, processing and nutrient loss, and that keep food growing local, in short supply chains, while contributing to real jobs for people near you.
And stay tuned here at The Naturalized Human for more! Subscribe today.