Is granola ultra-processed?
Oats, syrup, oil and nuts is group 3. The rest depends.
Often not, which separates it from most boxed cereal. Granola is oats baked with a syrup and an oil, and if that is all it contains it is group 3: a group 1 food with group 2 ingredients added.
- Oats, honey or maple syrup, oil, nuts, seeds, dried fruit: group 3.
- Added flavourings, invert sugar syrup or glucose-fructose syrup: group 4.
- Added protein, which usually means an isolate: group 4.
- Fortified with added vitamins: group 4 on that alone.
- Chocolate-coated clusters: group 4, from the coating.
Muesli is the same question with the baking removed, and unbaked muesli of oats, fruit and nuts with nothing added is group 1 rather than group 3, since nothing has been put in at all.
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
- Is granola more processed than muesli?
- Slightly, in the sense that baking with syrup and oil adds group 2 ingredients where plain muesli adds nothing. Plain muesli can be group 1 and plain granola group 3, and neither is group 4.
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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