Naturalness and healthiness in “ultra-processed foods”: A multidisciplinary perspective and case study

Abstract

Background: Processed foods, and particularly “ultra-processed foods” (UPFs), as categorized by NOVA (Monteiro et al., 2016), have been highly criticized over the last few years. At the same time, consumers consistently perceive processed foods as less healthy and less natural than unprocessed foods.Scope and approachThis commentary aimed to examine the relationship between the degree of food processing, healthiness, and naturalness. A case study was included wherein the naturalness (measured through the Food Naturalness Index, Sanchez-Siles et al., 2019) and healthiness (measured through the Nutri-Score, Julia & Hercberg, 2017) of 734 snack bars (classified as UPFs by NOVA) were analyzed.Key findings and conclusionsThe degree of processing, food healthiness, and naturalness are different aspects of food. Our results show that not all snacks analyzed are necessarily unhealthy and unnatural. In particular, they were, in general, somewhat healthy and slightly natural. Importantly, there were significant differences between them in terms of Nutri-score and FNI values, which suggests that it is not appropriate to rate an overall product category (i.e., snack bars) as nutritionally poor and unnatural. Our findings can help stimulate an interdisciplinary dialogue routed in scientific evidence to clarify the role of so-called UPFs in the food system