Is instant coffee ultra-processed?

Instant coffee is group 1, which is the answer people find hardest to believe in this whole family.

Why

Instant coffee is brewed coffee with the water taken out, by spray drying or freeze drying. Removing water is a removal, not an addition, and nothing else is in the jar. By the same test that makes dried pasta and dried pulses group 1, so is a jar of instant.

Ground coffee and beans are group 1 for the same reason, and so is tea. Decaffeinated coffee is also group 1: caffeine has been removed, and again removal does not move a food.

What is not group 1

• Latte, cappuccino and mocha sachets: group 4, from milk powders, sugars, emulsifiers and flavourings.
• Iced coffee drinks in cans and bottles: usually group 4.
• Coffee whiteners and creamers: group 4, being built from oils, glucose syrup and stabilisers.
• The coffee itself, in all of the above, is still just coffee. Everything around it is the formulation.

This page exists mainly because it is the clearest possible demonstration that NOVA is about manufacturing rather than about how processed something feels. A freeze-dried powder in a jar sounds industrial and is group 1. A tub of spread looks like butter and is group 4.

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.