After all, where did the word ultra-processed come from?

?Many professionals working in food and nutrition often encounter the term “ultra-processed.” However, contrary to what many believe, this expression did not originate from a detailed technical study on food processing. The expression was chosen because the authors searched the internet for terms not yet used in studies when the NOVA classification was created. After testing several words, “ultra-processed” was the only one that didn't exist.

According to the authors of the NOVA classification, a product is classified as ultra-processed not necessarily because it goes through many processing steps but because it contains at least one food additive or industrial food ingredient. The latter is “that ingredient you can't find in a domestic kitchen” (information shared by the NOVA researcher at the last International Obesity Congress in Brazil).

The problem starts here: all the additives and ingredients used in industrialized foods are approved and considered safe for consumption. This approval is not exclusive to ANVISA in Brazil but to bodies such as the FDA in the USA, EFSA in the European Union, JECFA (FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives), and almost 200 WHO member countries worldwide. If they weren't safe, these organizations wouldn't authorize their use because they wouldn't be irresponsible or frivolous.

However, the group that invented the NOVA classification radically disagrees with these safety standards set by the leading global health authorities. For the authors of NOVA, the additives and ingredients used in the food industry are pathogenic, i.e., they cause disease and are dangerous. They do not consider consumer safety limits, such as the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) or the NOAEL (No Observed Adverse Effect Level). For them, the mere fact that a product has an additive or an industrial ingredient in the list of ingredients, such as fiber, already classifies it as “ultra-processed”, regardless of the number of processing steps the food has gone through.

This criticism, however, is not scientifically based but rather a criticism of capitalism. They argue that industries, especially multinationals (they call them transnationals), produce low-quality food with low-quality ingredients to sell it cheaply and make big profits. In addition, they claim that industries formulate their products with the deliberate purpose (by design, as they say) of making people sick. Now, I ask you: how could an entire industry produce food to make people sick on purpose? What would be the advantage of that? Could someone explain it to me?

It's worth remembering that all food that requires preparation is “processed”. For example, the rice we cook at home has several processing stages. After harvesting, it goes through the processing process, which includes cleaning, husking, separation by the chaff chamber, marinating, honing, homogenizing, and grading. The grains go through a sieve to remove impurities and are husked in machines. The husked rice is then polished with water, and the grains are selected electronically using air jets. Finally, the rice is sorted by equipment that selects intact grains.