What are ultra-processed foods?

"Processed" vs "ultra-processed": the NOVA groups

Almost all food is "processed" in some way — freezing, canning, baking and pasteurising are all processing, and often make food safer or last longer. So "processed" on its own doesn't tell you much. The term ultra-processed comes from a specific system called NOVA, developed by researchers led by Carlos Monteiro, which sorts foods into four groups by the nature and extent of processing:

• Group 1 — Unprocessed or minimally processed: fruit, vegetables, eggs, milk, plain rice, plain yoghurt.
• Group 2 — Processed culinary ingredients: the things you cook with, like oil, butter, sugar and salt.
• Group 3 — Processed foods: group 1 foods with group 2 ingredients added, such as tinned beans, cheese, or freshly made bread.
• Group 4 — Ultra-processed foods: industrial formulations made mostly from substances extracted from foods, plus additives.

The key idea: NOVA groups by how a food is made, not by its nutrition label. That's a strength (it captures something calories miss) and, as we'll see, a weakness.

How to spot a UPF

A useful rule of thumb from the British Heart Foundation: ultra-processed foods "typically have more than 1 ingredient that you never or rarely find in a kitchen" — think preservatives, emulsifiers, sweeteners, and artificial colours and flavours. In practice that covers a lot of everyday products: many mass-produced sauces and ready meals, sausages and other processed meats, packaged biscuits and cakes, fizzy drinks, and a good deal of what lives in the "snacks" aisle.

Turn the packet over and the additives and long ingredient list are usually the giveaway — which is exactly the sort of thing our food-label guide helps you read.

How common are they?

Very. According to the BHF, more than half of the typical British daily diet is made up of ultra-processed food — a higher share than any other country in Europe. That's part of why the topic matters: even small shifts across a whole population add up.

What the evidence actually shows

This is where careful wording matters, because the headlines often overshoot. A lot of research links diets high in UPFs to worse health outcomes, including heart disease. But nearly all of it is observational — it watches what people eat and what happens to their health, which can reveal a pattern but can't prove one thing caused the other.

The British Heart Foundation is explicit: these studies "can only find associations between factors. They cannot prove that ultra-processed foods directly cause negative health outcomes like heart disease."

The UK government's own scientific advisers, SACN, reviewed the evidence in 2023 and reached a similar, measured view. They found the "observed associations between higher consumption of (ultra-)processed foods and adverse health outcomes are concerning," but that "the evidence to date needs to be treated with caution." They also flagged a real limitation of NOVA itself: it can be hard to apply consistently in the UK, and "the classification of some foods is discordant with nutritional and other food-based classifications" — in other words, a food's NOVA group and its actual nutrition don't always line up. SACN's practical conclusion was that existing UK dietary advice, like the Eatwell Guide, already points in the right direction.

The honest summary: eating a lot of UPFs is associated with poorer health, and that's worth taking seriously — but "associated with" is not the same as "proven to cause," and the science is still developing.

Why UPFs might be a problem

Even setting aside the open questions, there are down-to-earth reasons to be a bit wary. As the BHF points out, UPFs "often contain high levels of saturated fat, salt and sugar," and when they fill up our plates "we leave less room in our diets for more nutritious foods." They also tend to be energy-dense and easy to over-eat. You don't need a settled debate about processing to see why a diet built mostly on those products might not serve you well.

What to do about it

The advice from health bodies is refreshingly un-dramatic — no need to banish an entire category of food. The BHF suggests focusing on balance: make sure there are minimally processed foods in your diet too, rather than trying to cut everything out. In practice:

• Tilt toward group 1 and 3 foods: more veg, fruit, wholegrains, beans, eggs and freshly made meals.
• Cook from scratch when you can — even a little more often makes a difference.
• Pick the better version: wholegrain bread over white, baked beans as a store-cupboard staple.
• Use the label: check the traffic lights and per-100g figures for salt, sugar and saturated fat.
• Don't aim for perfect. A convenient ready meal on a busy night isn't a failure — it's the overall pattern that counts.

This is where Scrannr earns its place: scan a barcode and it flags additive-heavy products and surfaces the salt, sugar and saturated fat, then folds it into a single health score — a fast way to lean toward the less-processed option without reading a research paper in the aisle.

Not medical advice. This guide is general information, checked against the NOVA classification, the UK's SACN and British Heart Foundation guidance. The science on ultra-processed food is still developing. For advice about your own diet or health, speak to your GP or a registered dietitian.