NOVA is a food classification system developed by Carlos Monteiro and first published in 2009. NOVA divides food products and food ingredients into in four groups – Minimally Processed, Culinary Processed, Processed, Ultra-Processed. The groupings reflect the degree and purpose of processing.
The 2025 Dietary Guidance Advisory Committee proceeding has concluded and the final report will include no reference to #UPF. The committee’s hands were tied to an “evidence-based” approach. However a lack of mechanistic evidence is not going to stop Americans from needing guidance. So they will look elsewhere.
That’s why I’ve decided to get involved. I’ve selected 100 recipes from my personal collection. It’s a work in progress but my goal is to categorize each recipe in one of these three groups:
🟢 Recipes that are made combinations of with minimally processed, processed culinary, and processed ingredients – NOVA Group 1, Group 2, Group 3 / G123.
🔴 Recipes or pre-prepared meals made with mostly ultra-processed ingredients – NOVA Group 4 / #UPF.
🟡 Recipes or pre-prepared meals made with squishy ingredients. There’s a growing list of food products that don’t fit neatly in a single NOVA group and experts tend to disagree on how to categorized them. Especially challenging is the line of demarcation between processed and ultra-processed. This group of food products benefit from modern industrial food processing, the science of microbiology, but list more than 5 ingredients. Most also avoid large-scale, outdated, brutal over-processing methods and the use of sensory (artificial or natural) additives to modify color, flavor, texture. Most also tend to be respectful of a food’s cellular structure or food matrix.
For some background information on NOVA, check out this Dialogue I developed for the Digital Edition of the IFT Magazine “Are NOVA’s Critics Missing an Important Point”.
For a more comprehensive breakdown of both the classification system and healthy outcomes, check out “Ultra-processed foods, diet quality, and health using the NOVA classification system”.
