I’m still a skeptic of the Nova system into the 4 categories (1: unprocessed or minimally processed, 2: processed ingredients, 3: processed foods, 4: ultra processed foods), because it’s simultaneously an oversimplification and a complication. It’s an oversimplification because the idea of processing itself is such a broad category of things one can do to food, that it isn’t itself all that informative, and it’s a complication in that experts struggle to classify certain foods as actual prepared dishes being eaten (homemade or otherwise).
So the line drawing between regular processed food and ultraprocessed is a bit counterintuitive, and a bit inconsistent between studies. Guided by the definitions, experts struggle to place unsweetened yogurt into Nova 1 (minimally processed), 2 (processed culinary ingredients), 3 (processed food) or 4 (ultra processed food). As it turns out, experts aren’t very consistent in classifying the foods, which introduces inconsistency in the studies that are performed investigating the differences. Bread, cheese, and pickles in particular are a challenge.
And if the whole premise is that practical nutrition is more than just a list of ingredients, then you have to handle the fact that merely mixing ingredients in your own kitchen might make for a food that’s more than a sum of its parts. Adding salt and oil catapults pretty much any dish to category 3, so does that mean my salad becomes a processed food when I season it? Doesn’t that still make it different than French fries (category 3 if I make them myself, probably, unless you count refined oil as category 4 ultra processed, at which point my salad should probably be ultra processed too)? At that point, how useful is the category?
So even someone like me, who does believe that nutrition is so much more than linear relationships between ingredients and nutrients, and is wary of global food conglomerates, isn’t ready to run into the arms of the Nova system. I see that as a fundamentally flawed solution to what I agree is a problem.
I’m still a skeptic of the Nova system into the 4 categories (1: unprocessed or minimally processed, 2: processed ingredients, 3: processed foods, 4: ultra processed foods), because it’s simultaneously an oversimplification and a complication. It’s an oversimplification because the idea of processing itself is such a broad category of things one can do to food, that it isn’t itself all that informative, and it’s a complication in that experts struggle to classify certain foods as actual prepared dishes being eaten (homemade or otherwise).
So the line drawing between regular processed food and ultraprocessed is a bit counterintuitive, and a bit inconsistent between studies. Guided by the definitions, experts struggle to place unsweetened yogurt into Nova 1 (minimally processed), 2 (processed culinary ingredients), 3 (processed food) or 4 (ultra processed food). As it turns out, experts aren’t very consistent in classifying the foods, which introduces inconsistency in the studies that are performed investigating the differences. Bread, cheese, and pickles in particular are a challenge.
And if the whole premise is that practical nutrition is more than just a list of ingredients, then you have to handle the fact that merely mixing ingredients in your own kitchen might make for a food that’s more than a sum of its parts. Adding salt and oil catapults pretty much any dish to category 3, so does that mean my salad becomes a processed food when I season it? Doesn’t that still make it different than French fries (category 3 if I make them myself, probably, unless you count refined oil as category 4 ultra processed, at which point my salad should probably be ultra processed too)? At that point, how useful is the category?
So even someone like me, who does believe that nutrition is so much more than linear relationships between ingredients and nutrients, and is wary of global food conglomerates, isn’t ready to run into the arms of the Nova system. I see that as a fundamentally flawed solution to what I agree is a problem.
The more I read about how they classify food, the more I see it as a shitty classification system. It almost reminds me of the DSM.