How to spot an ultra processed food in five seconds

Turn the packet over and look for one ingredient you wouldn’t keep in your own kitchen: an emulsifier, a flavouring, a sweetener, a colour, or something like maltodextrin or hydrolysed protein. One is enough to make a food ultra processed under the most widely used definition. The UK has no legal definition, so treat this as a rule of thumb.

Is there a legal definition of ultra processed food in the UK?

No. Nothing in UK food law defines it, and there isn’t even an agreed definition to put into law. Even the food regulator says there is no single, universally agreed definition, and ultra processed food doesn’t appear in government dietary recommendations.

The one most people use, including most of the research, is NOVA, a system developed in Brazil that sorts food into four groups by how much it has been processed and why. Group 1 is unprocessed or minimally processed food. Group 2 is cooking ingredients such as oil, sugar and salt. Group 3 is processed food, made by adding those to group 1 foods, which takes in tinned vegetables, cheese and simple bread. Group 4 is ultra processed.

What did the UK’s nutrition advisers conclude in 2023?

That the link is worrying and the evidence is weak. In July 2023 the government’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) reviewed the research and found that eating more ultra processed food was consistently associated with poorer health, which it called concerning.

It also found that the studies were almost all observational, and that it was unclear whether the link was explained by what these foods tend to contain: a lot of calories, saturated fat, salt and free sugars, and little fibre. Its conclusion was that the evidence to date needs to be treated with caution. It had doubts about NOVA itself, too. The groups are broad, and they put foods with differing nutritional value side by side.

You’ll often see a figure for how much of the UK diet is ultra processed. Estimates run from 51 to 68 per cent of energy, but the committee said the validity and reproducibility of those numbers is unclear.

What is the five second check?

Read the ingredients list, and you’ll find the words are printed for you. By law, ingredients are listed in descending order of weight, and additives have to appear under the name of the job they do, such as emulsifier, colour, sweetener, thickener or flavour enhancer, followed by their specific name or E number.

NOVA’s own authors describe the practical test: if the list contains at least one item typical of ultra processed food, it’s ultra processed. Those items fall into two kinds.

One detail catches people out. A preservative on its own doesn’t put a food in group 4, because NOVA allows additives that keep food safe for longer in processed foods as well. It’s the cosmetic additives and the kitchen strangers that decide it.

Does ultra processed mean unhealthy?

Not automatically. A chocolate bar and a ready meal high in fat, salt or sugar can both be ultra processed, and so can a shop bought wholegrain loaf or a low fat yoghurt. Wholemeal sliced bread, wholegrain or higher fibre breakfast cereals and baked beans can all be part of a healthy diet, ultra processed or not.

Some processing does you good. Iron and vitamin B1 are added to flour, and calcium can be added to plant milks. Where the evidence is strong is on calories, saturated fat, salt and sugar, which is exactly what the front of pack colours show. If you haven’t read them closely, traffic light labels explained covers what the colours mean and what they leave out.

Are the additives in ultra processed food safe?

Each one has been assessed as safe at the levels allowed. Every additive used in the UK has to pass a safety assessment that looks at its toxicology, how much of it goes into which foods, and how much of it we’re likely to eat across a whole diet, and it’s reassessed if new evidence turns up. Approval also depends on there being a real technical reason for using it.

That isn’t quite the same as saying the whole question is closed. When the 2023 review listed the possible explanations for why ultra processed food is linked with poorer health, the effects of specific additives, including low and no calorie sweeteners, were on the list, alongside softer textures that make food quicker to eat, high temperature cooking, cheap prices and heavy marketing. None of them has been shown to be the answer yet.

Is ultra processed food bad for your gut?

Nobody can tell you that with confidence yet. Among the reviews the UK’s advisers examined were ones looking at gut disease, alongside heart disease, type 2 diabetes and others, and the same caution applies to all of them: the studies were observational, and they couldn’t separate the processing from the fat, salt, sugar and missing fibre.

The fibre part is the piece I’d hold on to. Most adults eat about 20g a day against the 30g advised, and diets high in ultra processed food are often low in it. Fibre feeds your gut bacteria whatever the box says.

So what do I do with the check?

Use it to notice, not to panic. On the wards I lived on cereal, packet soup, instant noodles, freezer meals and a sad sandwich with one slice of cheese in it. You don’t have to go from that to a kitchen without a single packet in it.

Pick the product you buy most often and read its list. If there’s a version on the same shelf with a shorter list and more fibre per 100g, that’s one swap made. Bread is the obvious place to start, and is bread ultra processed takes it apart. For reading lists in general, see how to read an ingredients list.

If you’d like to try the check on a few real looking labels, the label test quiz takes a few minutes.