Is yoghurt ultra-processed?
Plain is group 3. Most flavoured pots are not.
Plain yoghurt is group 3: milk and live cultures, and nothing else. Greek yoghurt made by straining is the same. Whole, semi-skimmed and skimmed make no difference on their own.
Where the shelf divides
Most flavoured pots are group 4. Fruit yoghurts typically carry modified starch, thickeners, flavourings and often a sweetener, and any one of those is enough.
- Milk, cultures, and optionally fruit and sugar: group 3.
- Modified maize starch, pectin used as a thickener, flavouring, sweetener, colouring: group 4.
- High-protein pots usually contain milk protein concentrate or isolate, which is group 4.
- Low-fat flavoured pots are group 4 more often than the full-fat equivalent.
The reliable test
Plain yoghurt has two or three ingredients and no packaging claim on the front. The further a pot moves from that, the more likely it carries something whose job is texture or shelf life rather than food, and that is precisely the line group 4 draws.
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 Greek yoghurt ultra-processed?
- Strained Greek yoghurt is group 3. Products labelled Greek style rather than Greek sometimes use thickeners to imitate the texture instead of straining, and those are group 4.
- Is high-protein yoghurt ultra-processed?
- Usually. The protein is generally added as a milk protein concentrate or isolate, which is a substance extracted from a food rather than a food, and that is the group 4 definition.
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.
Get the app