These are unprocessed foods [1].
From them you get processed culinary ingredients, like olive oil, vinegar, honey and butter. As long as you’re minimally vigilant with these, you should be fine, though some production methods may still add preservatives or use solvents in their manufacture.
After that one has processed foods, which may still have a good amount of Group 1 and 2 ingredients, before we get to Group 4, UPFs, what California is banning in school lunches.
For me, processed food might include something like unsweetened peanut butter where while the only ingredient is peanuts, it's still been through a process of grinding so that it's no longer in its natural form.
At the other end of the spectrum an example of ultra processed food would be a factory packaged item with a long list of ingredients which includes ones you don't recognise e.g. chemical names or E numbers.
- Unprocessed or minimally processed foods (fresh or frozen products, yoghurts, etc)
- Processed culinary ingredients (oil, vinegar)
- Processed foods (foods created from combining elements of the first 2 groups using typical cooking processes, like bread, pasta, some meats, canned vegetables)
- Ultra-processed foods (foods requiring industrial processing).
Flour is minimally processed, Nova Group 1, if it’s simply milled and separated. If it’s prepared with industrial solvents, or bleached, it goes straight to Group 4.
Nova doesn’t distinguish between ingredients and food [1]. (It needs to be able to do this. UPFs are defined, in part, by almost lacking low-Nova inputs.)
Cooking it first is a big improvement, but the same is true of carrots, IMO.
Bread is made from dough, which is mainly made from flour (the "minimally processed" food), which is made from grains (the unprocessed food)
“Traditional methods to puff or pop rice include frying in oil or salt. Commercial puffed rice is usually made by heating rice kernels under high pressure in the presence of steam, though the method of manufacture varies widely” [1].
If I had to guess, the commercial stuff is more thoroughly and homogeneously gelatinized. That, in turn, probably raises its glycemic index.
No. Processed culinary ingredient (Group 2) and minimally processed (Group 1). (Obviously, both can be turned into a UPF through fuckery.)
"Minimally processed foods, that together with unprocessed foods make up NOVA group 1, are unprocessed foods altered by industrial processes such as removal of inedible or unwanted parts, drying, crushing, grinding, fractioning, roasting, boiling, pasteurization, refrigeration, freezing, placing in containers, vacuum packaging or non-alcoholic fermentation. None of these processes add salt, sugar, oils or fats, or other food substances to the original food." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10260459/
Too minimally processed-I’d say it’s Group 1. You’re taking Group 1 ingredients (avocado, jalapeño, lime, onion, maybe tomato and cilantro) and chopping, squeezing and pounding them. It can entirely be done with stone tools.
Salt is the Group 2 ingredient that I was mentioning. Nova calls out adding salt or sugar to Group 1 makes it Group 3, and specifically calls out Group 1 does not contain added salt.
"Minimally processed foods, that together with unprocessed foods make up NOVA group 1, are unprocessed foods altered by industrial processes such as removal of inedible or unwanted parts, drying, crushing, grinding, fractioning, roasting, boiling, pasteurization, refrigeration, freezing, placing in containers, vacuum packaging or non-alcoholic fermentation. None of these processes add salt, sugar, oils or fats, or other food substances to the original food." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10260459/
Depends on if they’re ultra processed or not.
If they won’t stale for weeks, they’re ultra processed with preservatives and/or solvents. If they go stale and have a simple ingredients list, they probably aren’t.
(And kids don’t need to be habituated to having either with every lunch.)
So no, it’s a lot more arbitrary than that.
Sure. But they’re commonly in kitchens and simply produced, making their status as Group 1 and 2 Nova foods unambiguous.
When a grandma bakes some cookies for their grandchildren she uses only some basic ingredients - eggs, flour, butter, sugar.
For the product that food industries calls as cookies however, the list of ingredients looks like a git SHA.
> The E.U. says that if they can’t dismiss the possibility of harm, they can’t find an additive safe,” Galligan says. In the U.S., the bar is much lower; companies can add new ingredients to their foods without even informing the FDA. “In the U.S., it feels like the FDA is waiting to act until harm is definitely proven,” says Galligan.
[1] https://time.com/7210717/food-additives-us-fda-banned-europe...
Look into the process used to make soybean oil vs the process used to make butter.