What is NOVA?

NOVA is a way of classifying food by the extent and purpose of the industrial processing it has been through, rather than by the nutrients it contains. It sorts every food and drink into one of four groups.

1 Unprocessed Whole foods as nature made them, or only dried, frozen or pasteurised: fruit, eggs, plain milk, oats.
2 Kitchen staple Ingredients pressed or refined from foods to cook with: oil, butter, sugar, salt.
3 Processed Whole foods preserved with a few kitchen staples: canned beans, cheese, fresh bread, salted nuts.
4 Ultra-processed Industrial recipes with ingredients no home kitchen uses: soft drinks, most cereals, packaged snacks.

It was developed by researchers at the Center for Epidemiological Studies in Health and Nutrition (NUPENS) at the University of São Paulo, led by Carlos Monteiro, and first published in 2009. "Processing" here means the physical, biological and chemical methods applied to food after it is separated from nature and before it is eaten or cooked. NOVA is the classification behind most research on ultra-processed food, and Brazil's official dietary guidelines are built on it.

The four groups

NOVA group 1 Group 1: Unprocessed or minimally processed

Group 1 foods are edible parts of plants, animals or fungi, either as they come or altered only by processes such as drying, crushing, roasting, boiling, pasteurisation, chilling, freezing or non-alcoholic fermentation. Those processes keep the food recognisably itself; nothing such as sugar, salt or oil is added.

Examples: fresh or frozen vegetables and fruit, plain milk, eggs, dried beans, rice, plain nuts, coffee and tea.

NOVA group 2 Group 2: Processed culinary ingredient

Group 2 covers substances extracted from group 1 foods or from nature by pressing, refining, grinding or milling, and used in kitchens to prepare, season and cook group 1 foods. They are rarely eaten on their own.

Examples: vegetable oils, butter, sugar, salt, honey, starches, vinegar.

NOVA group 3 Group 3: Processed food

Group 3 foods are made by adding group 2 ingredients such as salt, sugar or oil to group 1 foods, using preservation or cooking methods such as canning, bottling or, for breads and cheeses, non-alcoholic fermentation. Most have two or three ingredients and are recognisable as modified versions of the original food.

Examples: canned vegetables in brine, fruit in syrup, salted nuts, cheeses, freshly made bread, cured meats.

NOVA group 4 Group 4: Ultra-processed food

Group 4 foods are industrial formulations made mostly or entirely from substances extracted from foods or derived from food constituents, with little if any intact group 1 food. They are identified by ingredients rarely used in home kitchens, such as protein isolates, maltodextrin or invert sugar, and by "cosmetic" additives, such as flavourings, colours, emulsifiers and sweeteners, that make the final product palatable or appealing.

Examples: soft drinks, packaged snacks, most breakfast cereals, mass-produced packaged breads, reconstituted meat products, instant noodles.

How ultra-processed foods are identified

The defining feature of a group 4 product is not that it is made in a factory, but that it is formulated from substances that a home cook would not have. NOVA's authors describe two kinds of tell-tale ingredient, which they call markers of ultra-processing:

Substances of no or rare culinary use. These are extracted from foods or derived from them: sugars such as fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, invert sugar, maltodextrin and dextrose; modified oils such as hydrogenated or interesterified oils; and protein sources such as hydrolysed proteins, soy protein isolate, gluten, casein and whey protein.
"Cosmetic" additives. These are additives whose job is to make the final product palatable or appealing rather than to preserve it: flavourings, flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers, sweeteners, thickeners, and anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, foaming, gelling and glazing agents.

One marker is enough. Plain rolled oats are group 1. Oats baked with sugar and oil into a granola are group 3. Add flavouring or an emulsifier to that granola and it becomes group 4, even though it looks and tastes much the same.

How this site gets its NOVA groups

We do not classify products ourselves. Every group on this site comes from Open Food Facts, which computes it automatically from the ingredient list, additives and category that contributors enter. Their implementation turns the NOVA definitions into lists of ingredients, additives and categories, each tagged with the minimum group it implies; a product gets the highest group any of its markers points to. On every product page we show which markers were found and highlight them in the ingredient list.

Limits worth knowing

It is an estimate from crowdsourced data. If an ingredient list is incomplete, mistyped or out of date, the group can be wrong. Products whose recipe changed may still show the old one.
Processing is not the same as nutrition. Table sugar and butter are minimally processed ingredients; some ultra-processed products, such as certain wholegrain breads, have a reasonable nutrient profile. NOVA answers "how and why was this processed?", which is a different question from "is this healthy?".
The research is about patterns, not single products. Studies linking ultra-processed food to poorer health outcomes look at the share of a whole diet that is group 4. Researchers still debate why that link exists, and how much of it comes from processing itself rather than from the nutrients and eating patterns that come with it.
Group 4 is broad. A soft drink and a mass-produced wholemeal loaf with an emulsifier are both group 4. That is why each product page lists the specific markers, so you can judge them yourself.