How many processed foods count as unhealthy in the UK depends heavily on which rating system is used, a study in the journal BMJ Medicine has found. The researchers applied five nutrient profiling models to 1,898 processed and ultra-processed products taken from a nationally representative database of UK food and drink.
Two of the models are in use today: the Food Standards Agency's model, used to define foods high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS), which sorts products into "healthy" and "less healthy", and the front-of-pack traffic-light labels, which colour fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt red, amber or green. The other three, called NPM1, NPM2 and NPM3, were built for the study from the government's current dietary advice, the Eatwell Guide, each with slightly different thresholds.
The FSA model judged 57.6 per cent of the products unhealthy and the traffic lights 48.2 per cent. The three new models judged 91.5, 94.9 and 98.7 per cent of ultra-processed products unhealthy. A 2018 revision of the FSA model, due to take effect in January 2027, still identified 25 to 35 per cent fewer processed and ultra-processed products as unhealthy than the most conservative of the new models.
"Food and drink products that, according to UK government dietary guidance, contain excess amounts of harmful nutrients are not identified by current systems for regulating UK food and drink," the authors write. They argue for a single system with agreed thresholds aligned with the dietary guidance, for use in policy and regulation.
The products were classed with the Nova system, which defines ultra-processed foods as industrially made, pre-packaged products containing ingredients not used in home cooking, such as cosmetic additives, modified starches or isolated proteins. The study also notes that only 0.1 per cent of people in the UK follow all nine Eatwell Guide recommendations, with average intakes of free sugar, saturated fat and salt above the advice and fruit, vegetables and fibre below it.
FoodNavigator notes that a stricter, unified model would put many more products in the unhealthy group, as governments across Europe debate how to profile foods and define ultra-processing.
Reported by Lisa Buckingham for FoodNavigator.
Source: FoodNavigator
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