The NOVA classification, explained
Four groups, one question: what was done to this food before it reached the shelf. Including the items that sit awkwardly between groups.
NOVA is a classification of food by the extent and purpose of industrial processing. It was developed by a research team led by Carlos Monteiro at the University of São Paulo, and it has four groups. Every food sits in exactly one of them.
What NOVA is not: a rating, a score, a ranking or a nutrition measure. It has no numbers out of ten and no traffic lights. Group 4 is not a fail and group 1 is not a pass. This is worth stating early because almost every popular description of NOVA gets it wrong in the same direction.
The four groups
Group 1: Unprocessed
Whole foods, and foods altered only by processes that remove inedible parts or preserve them without adding anything. Drying, crushing, grinding, chilling, freezing, pasteurising and fermenting all leave a food in group 1.
On the example receipt: TESCO SEMI SKIM 2.27L, BANANAS LOOSE, BROCCOLI EACH, CHICKEN BREAST 650G, GREEK YOGURT 500G, BASMATI RICE 1KG.
Group 2: Ingredient
Substances extracted from group 1 foods and used to cook with rather than eaten alone. Oils, butter, sugar, salt, flour. The group exists because these are inputs to a kitchen, and treating a bottle of olive oil as a food in its own right would distort every measurement made with it.
On the example receipt: ANCHOR BUTTER 250G, OLIVE OIL 500ML.
Group 3: Processed
A group 1 food with a group 2 ingredient added, usually to preserve it or make it palatable. Tinned vegetables in brine, cured meat, salted nuts, most cheese, freshly baked bread. Typically two or three recognisable ingredients, and the original food is still identifiable in the result.
On the example receipt: CHEDDAR MATURE 400G.
Group 4: Ultra-processed
Industrial formulations. Made largely or wholly from substances extracted from foods, or synthesised, and combined with additives that exist to deliver texture, colour, flavour or shelf life. Protein isolates, invert sugars, hydrogenated oils, modified starches, emulsifiers, stabilisers and flavourings are the markers.
On the example receipt: MCVITIE DIGESTIVE 400G, HOVIS THICK WHITE 800G, WALKERS CHEESE ONION 6PK, COCA COLA ZERO 6X330ML, HEINZ BEANS 4X415G.
The useful test is not whether a product is unhealthy. It is whether you could plausibly make it in a domestic kitchen from ingredients you could buy as ingredients. Most of group 4 fails that test by design, because the formulation is the product.
The cases that are genuinely hard
Any honest account of NOVA has to admit that the boundaries are argued about, particularly between groups 3 and 4. Wholemeal supermarket bread is the classic example: a loaf from a bakery is group 3, while an industrial loaf with emulsifiers and preservatives is group 4, and the packet does not always make clear which one you are holding.
Tinned baked beans are another. The beans and the tomato are whole foods, but the sauce is a formulation, and different classifiers place the product differently. Bagged records a confidence figure alongside every classification precisely so these cases can be seen rather than buried.
The two least confident calls on the first real receipt were exactly the two genuine judgement calls. Everything unambiguous scored high.
Bagged parser evaluation, August 2026
How Bagged applies NOVA
From the product name printed on the receipt, and nothing else. There is no barcode, no lookup against a product database and no ingredients list, because a till roll carries none of those.
That is a real constraint and it cuts both ways. It means the classification is an inference and will sometimes be wrong. It also means it works on the entire shop at once, including own-brand items, loose produce and anything without a barcode, which is where product databases tend to run out. More on that in how to read a supermarket receipt.
Common questions
- Who created the NOVA classification?
- A research team led by Carlos Monteiro at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. It has since been used widely in nutrition research and by several national dietary guidelines.
- Is NOVA the same as Nutri-Score?
- No. Nutri-Score grades a product from A to E based on its nutritional composition, such as sugar, salt, saturated fat and fibre. NOVA does not grade anything: it groups food by how much industrial processing was involved. A product can score well on one and sit in group 4 of the other.
- Which NOVA group is bread in?
- It depends on the bread. A loaf made from flour, water, salt and yeast is group 3. An industrial loaf containing emulsifiers, preservatives or added gluten is group 4. This is one of the cases where the classification is a genuine judgement call from a product name alone.
- Does Bagged give me a NOVA score?
- No, and NOVA has no score to give. Bagged reports the share of your food and drink spend that fell into group 4, along with the line items behind it. There is no grade, no target and no comparison against anyone else.