Is bacon ultra-processed?

Traditionally cured bacon is group 3, which surprises people who expect anything cured to be the worst case. Pork, salt, and a curing agent is a group 1 food preserved with group 2 ingredients, and the pork is still what you are eating.

Nitrites do not move it. Curing salts are a preservation method, and NOVA treats preservation of a recognisable food as processing rather than ultra-processing. Whether nitrites matter for other reasons is a separate question and not one this classification answers.

What does move it

• Added water beyond what the cure needs, usually declared as a percentage, with a binder to hold it: group 4.
• Phosphates, stabilisers or added protein preparations: group 4.
• Flavourings, including smoke flavouring rather than actual smoking: group 4.
• Reformed bacon, built from pieces rather than cut from a joint: group 4.

Dry-cured bacon that shrinks little in the pan is usually the group 3 one. A rasher that releases a lot of white liquid is generally one with added water and a binder.

Sliced deli ham follows the same split and lands on the group 4 side more often, for the same reason: it is more likely to be reformed. Sausages divide the same way, covered in are sausages ultra-processed.

Working this out from a receipt is harder than from a packet, because a till prints about twenty characters of product name and no ingredients list. That is the problem Bagged exists to solve, and how a receipt is structured explains why it is the hard part.