Ultra-Processed

A word used everywhere. Defined almost nowhere.

BOTIA uses this term across the whole site. This page explains what it actually means — and what BOTIA can and cannot say about it.

What ultra-processed actually means

Ultra-processed is not a judgement or a marketing word. It comes from NOVA, a classification developed at the University of São Paulo and published by FAO in 2019. NOVA does not classify food by nutrients — by calories, fat or sugar. It classifies by how much industrial processing a food has undergone, and by whether it contains substances never used in home cooking.

The four NOVA groups

Group 1 — Unprocessed or minimally processed Fruit, vegetables, eggs, milk, meat, grains. Cleaned, cut, frozen or pasteurised, but nothing added.

Group 2 — Processed culinary ingredients Oil, butter, sugar, salt. Extracted from Group 1 foods and used to cook, not eaten alone.

Group 3 — Processed foods Bread, cheese, tinned vegetables, cured meat. Group 1 plus Group 2, with few ingredients and recognisable origins.

          Group 4 — Ultra-processed
          Industrial formulations containing substances you would never find in a kitchen: flavourings, emulsifiers, thickeners, colourings, sweeteners and protein isolates.
        

The difference between Group 3 and Group 4 is not how healthy something is. It is whether the ingredient list contains substances that exist only because industry needs them — to bind, to preserve, to colour, or to make something taste like what it no longer is.

The markers BOTIA already reads

The three evidence layers BOTIA uses are, in fact, the three groups of substances NOVA names as characteristic of ultra-processing. This is not a coincidence — it is the same criterion approached from the label.

Why this matters

The relevance of NOVA is that it looks at the whole, not the parts. A product can be low in sugar, low in fat, high in protein — and still be a Group 4 formulation. Nutritional labelling was not designed to show that. The ingredient list was never meant to be read as a whole either. BOTIA reads it as a whole.

BOTIA CAN

Detect individual ingredients that NOVA describes as markers of ultra-processing.
Show how many of those markers appear on a single label.
Explain what each one is doing there and where it comes from.

BOTIA CANNOT

Assign a NOVA group to a product — BOTIA reads ingredients, not whole formulations.
Know the industrial processes used, which the label never declares.
Tell you whether a product is good or bad for you. That is not a classification question.

BOTIA does not classify products. It reads what the label declares and tells you what it means. The conclusion is yours.

Sources: NOVA Classification (FAO, 2019) · WHO Food Safety

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