If you want to know how to tell if food is ultra-processed, the answer is on the back of the packet, not the front. Two families of ingredients mark a product as NOVA group 4: substances no home kitchen stocks, and additives whose job is cosmetic. Everything else — including, contrary to most guides, preservatives — does not count.
This is the practical companion to our NOVA classification guide. That page explains what the four groups are and where the evidence stands. This one is about the thirty seconds you spend holding a product in an aisle.
How to spot ultra-processed food on the label
Ignore the front of the pack entirely. “Natural”, “wholegrain”, “high in protein” and “no artificial colours” are marketing claims, and none of them has any bearing on NOVA classification. The classification depends on one thing: what is in the ingredients list.
Under NOVA — the framework developed by Carlos Monteiro and colleagues and set out in the FAO's 2019 report — a food is ultra-processed when it contains ingredients never or rarely used in home kitchens, or classes of additives whose purpose is to imitate or enhance the sensory qualities of the final product. That gives you a concrete test you can run in an aisle. One genuine marker is enough. And it works the other way too: a long list of recognisable kitchen ingredients, however long, does not make a food NOVA 4.
How to identify UPF: the two marker families
If you searched for an ultra processed food ingredients list, this is it — two families, drawn directly from Monteiro and the FAO report, not from a wellness blog.
Family one: substances with no home-kitchen use
These are food-derived substances you will never find in a domestic cupboard, because they are products of industrial fractionation rather than cooking:
- Protein isolates and hydrolysed proteins (whey, soya, pea)
- Maltodextrin
- Invert sugar and high-fructose corn syrup
- Hydrogenated or interesterified oils
- Mechanically separated meat
Any of these on a label is a strong signal the product is an industrial formulation rather than a modified whole food. This is why protein powder is typically NOVA 4 — the entire product is built on an isolate.
Family two: cosmetic additives
The second family is additives whose purpose is sensory — to make an industrial product look, taste or feel like something it is not:
- Flavourings and flavour enhancers
- Colours
- Non-sugar sweeteners (aspartame, sucralose, acesulfame K)
- Emulsifiers (lecithins, mono- and diglycerides)
- Thickeners, gelling, bulking, glazing and anti-foaming agents
The word “flavourings” on its own is one of the most reliable single markers you will see. Home cooks flavour food with ingredients; only factories flavour it with flavourings.
The correction most guides get wrong: preservatives
Here is the point that separates NOVA as Monteiro wrote it from NOVA as it circulates online. Preservatives, antioxidants and stabilisers used for durability do not, by themselves, make a food ultra-processed. Monteiro places them in group 3. His own examples: fruits in syrup with added antioxidants, and dried salted meats with added preservatives — both classed as processed foods, not ultra-processed ones.
This matters in practice. A tin of beans with an acidity regulator, a jar of olives with an antioxidant, a pack of ham with a preservative — none of these is NOVA 4 on that evidence alone. Guides that tell you to flag “any E-number” or “anything you can't pronounce” are testing for something NOVA does not measure. The question is never whether an additive exists; it is what the additive is for. Preservation is a group 3 purpose. Cosmetics is a group 4 purpose.
One more correction while we are here: NOVA is a category, not a score. A product with one emulsifier and a product with six additives are both simply group 4. Counting markers as if more meant worse is not something the framework claims.
The five-ingredient rule, and where it fails
The most popular shortcut says to avoid anything with more than five ingredients. It is quick, it needs no memorising, and it fails in both directions.
It fails short: a sugar-free drink can have three ingredients and still be NOVA 4, because one of them is a sweetener. It fails long: a curry sauce listing tomatoes, onions, oil, garlic and eight spices has twelve ingredients and not a single ultra-processing marker. Length is a rough proxy for formulation, and proxies mislead precisely when you rely on them.
Use it, if at all, as a trigger to read properly — not as a verdict. The real test is always the same: does the list contain a substance from family one, or an additive from family two.
A walkthrough of three aisles
The bread aisle
Most mass-produced sliced bread in the UK is made by the Chorleywood process, which typically adds emulsifiers such as mono- and diglycerides — a family-two marker, so most supermarket sliced loaves are typically NOVA 4. A freshly baked loaf of flour, water, yeast and salt is not. Worth holding onto: a wholemeal NOVA 4 loaf can still be a better nutritional choice than a white bakery one. The full bread breakdown is here.
The cereal aisle
Most breakfast cereals are extruded or flaked industrially and carry added sugars, flavourings and sometimes colours — typically NOVA 4. The exceptions hide in plain sight: plain rolled oats and plain shredded whole wheat with nothing added. Note that added vitamins do not decide the group either way — fortification is not a cosmetic additive. More on cereal here.
The chilled aisle
This is where marker-reading beats assumptions. Plain yoghurt is minimally processed; the flavoured pot next to it, with its sweeteners, flavourings and modified starch, is typically NOVA 4. Traditional block cheese is group 3; processed slices with emulsifying salts are group 4. And supermarket houmous can land either side of the line depending on whether the tub adds gums and flavourings or just oil, salt and an acidity regulator. Check the label — the same product name covers both groups.
What to check on the label
- Skip the front of the pack. Go straight to the ingredients list.
- Scan for family one: isolates, hydrolysed proteins, maltodextrin, invert sugar, hydrogenated or interesterified oils.
- Scan for family two: flavourings, colours, sweeteners, emulsifiers, thickeners.
- Do not count preservatives, antioxidants or stabilisers as markers — alone, they indicate group 3.
- One genuine marker means NOVA 4. More markers do not mean more ultra-processed.
- Remember what the answer does and does not tell you: NOVA describes processing, not nutrition.
One honest caveat before you trust any classification, including ours: NOVA is not perfectly reproducible. When over 150 experts classified the same foods in Braesco et al. 2022, they reached only fair agreement — a Fleiss kappa of about 0.32 to 0.34. Borderline products genuinely are borderline. Where the label is ambiguous, the honest answer is “probably”, not a verdict.
Or point your phone at it
Everything above is a manual version of what Cull automates. Scan a barcode — or an entire shelf — and the app reads the ingredients list, applies the NOVA markers, and shows you the group alongside a transparent health score covering nutrition, additives and processing. No memorising ingredient families in the cereal aisle. See how the UPF scanner works, or start with the NOVA classification guide if you want the framework in full.
Sources
- FAO (2019) — Ultra-processed foods, diet quality, and health using the NOVA classification system
- Monteiro et al. (2016) — NOVA. The star shines bright, World Nutrition
- Open Food Facts — NOVA groups for food processing
- Braesco et al. (2022) — Ultra-processed foods: how functional is the NOVA system? European Journal of Clinical Nutrition
- SACN (2023) — Position statement on processed foods and health
- The Conversation — Ultra-processed foods: bread may be considered one, but that doesn't mean it's all bad