Most UK bread is ultra-processed, and most of it does not need to be. The difference between a NOVA 4 loaf and a NOVA 3 one is usually two or three ingredients you would not keep in a kitchen — emulsifiers, flour treatment agents, preservatives to stretch shelf life past what flour, water, salt and time can manage.
Below are UK breads whose labels list none of them. Every one was pulled from Open Food Facts, filtered to zero additives, then checked individually against the live Cull database. Each row links to its product page so you can see the same data we did.
UK breads with no additives
| Product | NOVA | Cull score |
|---|---|---|
| Jason's — Sourdough Grains & Seeds | 3 | 72/100 |
| Aldi Specially Selected — Seeded Sourdough | 3 | 72/100 |
| Ryvita — Original CrispbreadThree ingredients: rye flour, rye and salt | 3 | 72/100 |
| Ryvita — Multigrain Crispbread | 3 | 72/100 |
| Aldi Specially Selected — White Sourdough | 3 | 65/100 |
| Jason's — Proper Sourdough | 3 | 58/100 |
| Co-op — Hand Finished Seeded Sourdough | 3 | 58/100 |
| Crosta Mollica — Organic Wholeblend Piadina | 3 | 49/100 |
Checked 31 July 2026against Open Food Facts and the live Cull database. Recipes change without notice and supermarket own-brands are reformulated regularly — scan the pack in front of you rather than trusting any list, including this one. Scores are Cull's own standard, not an official rating.
Why they are NOVA 3 and not NOVA 1
Every loaf above sits in NOVAgroup 3, and that is the correct place for bread made properly. Group 3 is processed food: group 1 ingredients combined with group 2 ones — flour, water, salt, time. It is the group that holds tinned vegetables, cured meat and traditional cheese. Preservation and fermentation are not faults in the system; they are what processing was invented for.
Group 4 is the one worth avoiding, and it is not entered by adding salt. It is entered by adding the markers of industrial formulation. Our guide to whether bread is ultra-processed works through where the line falls.
The four ingredients that look like additives and are not
Read any of these labels and you will find calcium carbonate, iron, niacin and thiamin. That is not the manufacturer sneaking something in. Schedule 1 of the Bread and Flour Regulations 1998 requires most UK flour to be fortified with calcium carbonate, iron, thiamin and nicotinic acid or nicotinamide. Wholemeal flour is exempt, which is why a wholemeal loaf often has a shorter list than a white one made to the same standard.
Fortification is a public-health measure dating from wartime, and it is not a NOVA group 4 marker. An app that counts it against a loaf is penalising the flour for obeying the law. See our additives guide for which classes actually signal ultra-processing.
“Sourdough” is not a protected term
The pattern in the table is obvious — almost everything on it is a sourdough. That is not a coincidence: a genuine long ferment does the job emulsifiers and preservatives are added to do.
But the word is not regulated in the UK. A loaf can be sold as sourdough while containing baker's yeast for speed, a flour treatment agent for volume and an emulsifier for crumb softness — sometimes called sourfaux. We excluded one supermarket “sourdough” from this list for exactly that reason, even though its additive count was recorded as zero: the ingredient text named a flour treatment agent. The list decides, never the name.
What no additives does not tell you
The scores above range from 49 to 72, and every one of those products has zero additives. Salt varies, fibre varies, and a crispbread and a piadina are not interchangeable. Additive-free is one useful fact about a product, not a summary of it — which is why Cull scores nutrition, additives and processing separately rather than collapsing them into a single verdict.