We have written before that most oat milk is ultra-processed, and it is. Gellan gum, guar gum, lecithin, phosphates, added oils — the standard carton is a formulation designed to behave like dairy in tea and coffee.
This is the other half of that article: the cartons that are not. Each was pulled from Open Food Facts, filtered to zero additives, then checked against the live Cull database.
UK plant milks with no additives
| Product | NOVA | Cull score |
|---|---|---|
| Alpro — Organic Soya UnsweetenedWater and hulled soya beans. The only NOVA 1 carton here | 1 | 72/100 |
| Oatly — Organic Oat DrinkWater, oats 10%, sea salt | 3 | 58/100 |
| Plenish — Organic Oat, No Added SugarWater, oats 12%, salt | 3 | 58/100 |
| Plenish — AlmondWater, almonds 6%, sea salt | 3 | 58/100 |
| Rude Health — Organic Oat DrinkAdds sunflower oil | 3 | 44/100 |
| Plenish — Organic Barista OatAdds coconut cream for foaming | 3 | 44/100 |
| Rude Health — Organic Almond DrinkRice-based, almonds only 1% | 3 | 28/100 |
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.
The one that is NOVA 1
Alpro's organic unsweetened soya lists water and hulled soya beans. That is the entire ingredient list, and it puts the carton in NOVAgroup 1 — unprocessed or minimally processed, the same group as milk, eggs and fruit.
It is worth sitting with that, because it cuts against the assumption that plant milk is inherently a factory product. Soak beans, blend with water, heat. Nothing added. The classification is not being generous; there is genuinely nothing there to classify.
The oat drinks are group 3 for one reason: salt. A group 2 culinary ingredient added to a group 1 food produces a group 3 food. That is the whole distance between the top of this table and the rest of it.
What the additive-free cartons give up
Here is the part most clean-label articles leave out. The standard supermarket oat drink is fortified — calcium, iodine, vitamin D, B12 — and those additions are part of why it lands in a formulated-looking ingredient list. Most of the cartons in the table above are not fortified.
If you have replaced dairy with plant milk across the board, that matters. Researchers have made the point directly: a fortified plant milk can be nutritionally useful despite a NOVA 4 classification, because the classification is about processing and the fortification is about your diet. Choosing the shortest ingredient list on the shelf is a reasonable preference, and it is not automatically the better nutritional choice.
This is the clearest case on the site for why Cull scores nutrition, additives and processing separately rather than collapsing them. A single verdict cannot express “cleaner label, fewer nutrients”, and that is exactly what is happening here.
Reading the barista versions
Barista cartons are engineered to foam and to not split in hot acidic coffee, and that engineering usually arrives as added oils, acidity regulators and stabilisers. Most barista editions are group 4.
The Plenish barista in the table is the exception worth noting: it gets its foaming from coconut cream rather than an additive system, so it stays group 3. It scores lower than the plain version because coconut cream is saturated fat — again, two different measurements pointing in different directions, and both worth seeing.
Our additives guide covers which classes signal ultra-processing and which do not.