Are ready meals ultra-processed?

Nearly always group 4, and this is the category where the answer is least surprising and most consequential, because a ready meal is usually one of the larger lines on a receipt.

Why almost all of them

A dish that has to survive a chilled supply chain, reheat evenly and taste the same in every tray needs things a domestic kitchen does not use: modified starches to control texture after reheating, stabilisers, flavourings, and often protein or fibre preparations. Any one places it in group 4.

The premium ranges are generally no different on this test. A shorter list and a nicer photograph do not change the manufacturing problem, and the additives are a consequence of that problem rather than a cost decision.

The exceptions

• Plain frozen components, a bag of frozen fish or plain frozen vegetables, are group 1.
• Chilled soups and sauces with short lists are sometimes group 3.
• A tray of something with six recognisable ingredients and no starch or stabiliser does exist, and is rare enough to be worth reading the label to confirm.

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.