Are baked beans ultra-processed?
Standard tins usually group 3. The reduced-sugar ones often are not.
A standard tin is usually group 3. Haricot beans, tomato, sugar, salt and a little cornflour is a group 1 food with group 2 ingredients added, and the beans are still the thing you are eating.
Where it changes
Reduced-sugar and no-added-sugar versions are frequently group 4, because taking the sugar out means putting a sweetener in, and non-sugar sweeteners are a group 4 marker on their own.
- Beans, tomatoes, sugar, salt, cornflour, spices: group 3.
- Sucralose, aspartame, acesulfame K, or 'sweetener': group 4.
- Flavoured tins, barbecue or smoky, usually carry flavourings and go to group 4.
- Beans with sausages depend on the sausages, which are almost always group 4.
The general pattern
Baked beans are a clean example of something that turns up repeatedly across a shop: the version marketed as the better choice is more often the ultra-processed one, because the thing being removed was doing a job and something had to replace it. The same holds for reduced-fat dairy and low-sugar drinks.
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.
Common questions
- Are reduced-sugar baked beans ultra-processed?
- Usually yes. Removing sugar generally means adding a non-sugar sweetener, which places the product in group 4 on its own.
- Does the brand matter?
- Only through the ingredients. Own-brand and branded tins sit in the same group when the list is the same, and the list is what decides it.
One photo of a receipt answers this for your own shopping.
Bagged reads every line and reports what share of your food spend was ultra-processed, and which items it was.
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