Is Sainsbury's Potato & Egg Salad with a salad cream dressing ultra-processed?

300g Prepared salads Sold in the United Kingdom

Yes, it's ultra-processed

1 Unprocessed
2 Kitchen staple
3 Processed
4 Ultra-processed

Signs of ultra-processing in its ingredients:

Colour
E100 Curcumin
E150a Plain caramel

17 ingredients
2 additives
Nutri-Score A

Less processed prepared salads

Less processed isn't automatically healthier, so compare the labels for what matters to you, such as sugar or salt.

Ingredients

Ultra-processing Processing signs are highlighted

Cooked Potato 31%, Lettuce, Hard-Boiled Egg 16%, Baby Plum Tomatoes, Cucumber, Salad Cream 8% (Water, Rapeseed Oil, Sugar (processing marker), Spirit Vinegar, Pasteurised Egg Yolk, Cornflour, Salt (processing marker), Mustard Seeds, Colours (ultra-processing marker) (Plain Caramel (ultra-processing marker)), Curcumin (ultra-processing marker))

Additives: E100 Curcumin , E150a Plain caramel

As written on the pack

Cooked Potato (31%), Lettuce, Hard-Boiled Egg (16%), Baby Plum Tomatoes, Cucumber, Salad Cream (8%) (Water, Rapeseed Oil, Sugar, Spirit Vinegar, Pasteurised Egg Yolk, Cornflour, Salt, Mustard Seeds, Colours: Plain Caramel, Curcumin)

What makes it ultra-processed

Cosmetic additives

Added to change how the food looks, feels or tastes, not to keep it safe. A hallmark of ultra-processed food.

E100 Curcumin Colours are substances which add or restore colour in a food, and include natural constituents of foods and natural sources which are normally not consumed as foods as such and not normally used as characteristic ingredients of food.
E150a Plain caramel Plain caramel is a brown colour made by heating sugars.
Colour Colours are added to restore colour lost in processing or to make a product look more appealing.

3 ingredients that would only make it processed

Kitchen staples like sugar, salt and oil. On their own they make a food processed, not ultra-processed.

Meals Products in the category "Meals" are at least group 3.
Salt Salt, added for taste and preservation.
Sugar Sugar refined from sugar cane or beet.

How the NOVA groups work

Among 224 prepared salads

From least to most processed, this one ranks 164th. 60% of the prepared salads here are ultra-processed.

Ranked by NOVA group, then by the number of ultra-processing signs, additives and ingredients. Our ordering, not part of NOVA.

All 224 prepared salads, least processed first

About this information

Data from this product on Open Food Facts (barcode 01730432, last edited 28 April 2026), available under the Open Database License. If something is wrong or the recipe has changed, you can correct it there.
Photo: Open Food Facts contributors, CC BY-SA 3.0.
The NOVA group is an automated estimate from crowdsourced data: a missing or mistyped ingredient can change it.
NOVA measures processing, not nutrition. For nutrition, Open Food Facts gives this product a Nutri-Score of A (from A, best, to E).
General information, not medical or dietary advice. Check the pack if you have an allergy.