Are fish fingers ultra-processed?

Closer than most people expect. The fish itself is group 1, and a coating of flour, breadcrumb, oil and salt is group 2 material, so a fish finger made from a cut fillet in a plain crumb is group 3.

Two things usually move it

• The batter. Raising agents, stabilisers, colours and flavourings are common in the coating even where the fish is untouched: group 4.
• Reformed fish. Products made from minced or bound fish rather than a cut fillet generally carry stabilisers or phosphates: group 4.

The label distinguishes them more clearly than most categories. A product describing its contents as a fillet is a different thing from one describing minced or formed fish, and that wording is regulated rather than marketing.

Fish fingers went on sale in Britain in 1955 and were originally a way to use cheaper fish, which is a reasonable summary of the category ever since: the fish is rarely the expensive or the complicated part.

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.