Nova classification

Right.

Because the moment people hear the word processed, they immediately think of the Nova scale.

Exactly.

That is the system that gave us the term UPF or ultra processed food.

The supplier reformulates the biscuit.

They use a natural coloring instead and they swap the sweetener for just standard sugar.

Does that biscuit suddenly drop out of Nova Group 4? Is it magically no longer ultra-processed?

The short answer is no.

us.And Sarah, who first came up with the concept of ultra-processed food, and how were these UPFs defined in those early days?

So there's a classification system called the NOVA classification system, and this classified foods across four different levels.

And it's NOVA four, which is the level that's considered ultra-processed.

And this classification system is based on the extent of processing and also the purpose of processing.

And this is the classification system that's typically used to classify if a food is ultra-processed.

There's a slight problem with it that it is very broad, it's very vague, so it's very difficult to actually identify yourself if a food is what we call a NOVA four classification.

Um, and this classification system, and this is really important, was specifically built on the purpose and extent, but never took into account the actual health effects of the processing.

It was also designed by epidemiologists, so it could be used across the world, across very different food systems, to give you results that could be useful when you combine them.