[drecked]

We need to get away from the NOVA system.

It’s terribly broken, which is unsurprising since it was never designed to do what it does, and ends up placing healthy, non addictive foods under the ultra processed category 4, while including hyper palatable foods that are not healthy at all in categories 1-3.

Hyper palatability, which is much better defined and is designed to capture what the NOVA system is actually used for, is likely a better categorization.

[dlcarrier]

My favorite nonsensical category 4 classification is anything with achiote in it. It's not part of a traditional European diet, and it's often used to add color so it makes the list, despite saffron having a similar role in European food and booth being a traditional and completely unprocessed ingredient.

Speaking of Mesoamerican ingredients, nixtamal is pretty heavily processed, and is a staple in many areas, but it's much healthier than unprocessed corn which can cause pellagra when used as a staple food.

[aziaziazi]

I mostly agree but wouldn't swap "Ultra" for "Hyper": those are great to sell iPhones but their maximalism tends to push our understanding in emotional zone, which is good for marketing but dommageable for decision making.

[kelipso]

The NOVA definition is meant to classify ultra processed foods, correct?

You seem to want the NOVA definition to classify between “healthy, non addictive foods” vs “hyper palatable foods”.

What these studies are doing is finding correlations between ultra processed foods and bad health. While the definition you seem to want would cause all sorts of circular definitions.

[staticassertion]

> The NOVA definition is meant to classify ultra processed foods, correct?

Yes. It does so very badly.

> You seem to want the NOVA definition to classify between “healthy, non addictive foods” vs “hyper palatable foods”.

If by "you", you mean "a ton of people who are involved in health policy", yes.

> What these studies are doing is finding correlations between ultra processed foods and bad health.

It's flawed because (A) Nova is so ambiguous and useless that we can't actually assume that "it was categorized via Nova" is true (B) what they hone in on is not actually related to Nova, it's actually about palatability, which Nova has no framework for. Inclusion of Nova is strictly detrimental to the conversation.