The Australian Food & Grocery Council (AFGC) has released a position paper, highlighting the limitations of the term ‘ultra-processed foods’ in research focused on public health and environmental outcomes, and offering an alternative perspective to address these issues.
Key to the AFGC’s criticism of the use of the term by the NOVA system, is the implication that processed foods are inherently bad. The paper says that the ‘ultra-processed food’ classification can sometimes contradict the scientific evaluation of foods.
“Currently, there is no proven correlation with the nutritional compositional of food and the level or amount of food processing,” it points out, saying that the majority of studies on processed food in epidemiological studies, such as NOVA, have a high degree of uncontrolled confounding factors, and do not allow for any conclusion of causality.
Use of the term can potentially confuse consumers, who may decline highly nutritious food low in saturated fat, sugar or salt, solely because of a perception that “processed” equals “unhealthy”.
Instead, the AFGC is calling for more focus to be placed on areas such as promotion of a healthy diet through considering core food groups and nutritional composition, an emphasis on a healthy lifestyle, creating a more healthy food environment by making healthier options more easily available, and supporting greater education and product innovation.
The full position paper can be accessed here.
