NOVA is a widely used food classification system that separates foods into four categories based upon their level of processing.
Group 1 is unprocessed or minimally processed foods (fruit, vegetables, meat, eggs, milk).
Group 2 is made up of processed culinary ingredients such as sugars, oils and butter.
Group 3 is processed foods (canned vegetables and fish, bread, jam).
Group 4 is ultra-high processed foods, which are mostly low in protein and fibre, and high in salt, sugar and fat, and have undergone industrial interventions such as extrusion, moulding and milling.
In his book Spoon-Fed, the King’s College epidemiologist Tim Spector notes: “The ultra-processed nature of modern food generally means that the complex structure of the plant and animal cells is destroyed, turning it into a nutritionally empty mush that our body can process abnormally rapidly.”
Recent research suggests that high UPF consumption also increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia and, according to a recent American study involving 50,000 health professionals, of developing colon cancer. Last month a study in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology found that people born after 1990 are more likely to develop cancer before they’re 50 than people born before 1970. It’s suspected that UPF might be a contributing factor to this development.
As the UK is estimated to draw more than 50% of its calorie intake from UPF, this is no passing health scare.
King’s College Dr Sarah Berry, a nutrition expert in the area of cardio-metabolic health, says: “There is very clear observational data showing that people who have higher intakes of ultra-processed foods have higher levels of ill-health, whether it be cancer, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, obesity or type 2 diabetes.”
Berry explains while the problem of UPF may be scientifically well-established, it isn’t easy, on an individual level, to deal with. After all, UPFs are so prevalent that stripping them completely out of our diet would be a logistical and time-consuming nightmare. What’s more, people enjoy their convenience and often relish their industrially enhanced taste.
The popularity of vegan cuisine in recent years has been mass-produced and carefully marketed. Yet so many of the glossily packaged plant-based substitutes are in fact UPFs.
“Look at oat milk, for example,” says Berry, citing a popular substitute for cow’s milk. “Its original structure has been taken out and it’s full of additives.”
Sophie Medlin, dietitian and chair of the London branch of the British Dietetic Association said: “The more you’re trying to make something imitate something that it’s not, the more processing it’s going to have to go through.” Medlin also said that it has become much easier to be a very unhealthy vegan.
Not so long ago the main criticism about UPF was that it lacked nutritional substance, and to counter that absence so-called healthy nutrients were added. Now food science is looking more closely at the different ways that natural food structures and ultra-processed foods are broken down by the human body. One theory is that food with its natural structure removed is the cause of inflammation, the body’s defence response to infection. A recent study that involved 20,000 Italian adults found that those with the highest consumption of UPF had the greatest risk of dying prematurely from any cause. It also found that inflammatory markers, such as higher white blood cell count, were most pronounced in those whose diets had the highest levels of UPF.
One of the big breakthroughs in understanding food nutrition in the 21st century is a greater understanding of the microbiome, the mostly gut-based micro-organisms that play a vital part in the digestion process. It’s known that some food additives such as sweeteners and emulsifiers commonly found in ultra-processed foods cause changes to the microbiome that increase inflammation.
Some researchers believe the body responds to elements of UPF as though they were a pathogen, as it would with an invading bacteria. This increase in inflammation throughout the body has been called “fast food fever”.
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