Is pasta ultra-processed?
Dried pasta is group 1. Filled and flavoured are not.
Dried pasta is group 1, and this is one of the answers people find hardest to accept. Durum wheat semolina and water, extruded and dried. Nothing has been added, and drying is a removal.
It sits in the same group as an apple, and for the same reason: the test is addition, not effort. Extruding a paste through a bronze die is a lot of work and none of it puts anything in.
The rest of the aisle
- Dried pasta, any shape, white or wholewheat: group 1.
- Egg pasta, dried or fresh, is group 1 if it is only flour, water and egg.
- Fresh filled pasta, tortellini and ravioli: usually group 4, from the filling rather than the dough. Processed cheese, stabilisers and flavourings are common.
- Pasta with added protein or fibre preparations: group 4.
- Instant and pot pasta: group 4, from the sauce sachet.
What goes on it usually matters more than the pasta. Most jarred sauces are group 4 where a tin of tomatoes is group 1, so a plate of pasta can swing between groups entirely on the sauce.
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 wholewheat pasta less processed?
- Not under NOVA. Both are group 1 if they contain only wheat and water. The difference is which part of the grain was used, which the classification does not weigh.
- Is fresh pasta ultra-processed?
- Plain fresh pasta of flour, water and egg is group 1. Filled fresh pasta is usually group 4 because of what is inside 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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