Which foods are ultra-processed?
Soda, candy, packaged snacks and ice cream, and also most of the ordinary food in a cart: packaged sliced bread, fruit yogurt cups, breakfast cereal, hot dogs and sausages, oat milk, protein bars and protein powder. Plain frozen vegetables, dried pasta, plain yogurt, canned beans and cheese aren’t.
The list people carry in their heads is the junk food list, and it misses most of what’s actually in a typical day. For US adults, the biggest single source of ultra-processed calories is sandwiches and burgers, then sweet baked goods, then sweet drinks (CDC, 2021 to 2023). Bread, rolls and tortillas come fifth.
We’d start with the staples you buy every week, since one swap in the cart repeats every time you eat it. Check the bread, the cereal, the yogurt and the drink before you worry about the candy aisle.
The surprising ones, counted
We ran the ingredient lists of US products in Open Food Facts, a public database of labels, through this site’s label checker on November 14, 2026. Here’s how many listed at least one ingredient a kitchen doesn’t keep:
| Food | Labels with a marker | The most common one |
|---|---|---|
| Packaged sliced bread | 88 of 94 | wheat gluten |
| Protein bars | 93 of 97 | natural flavor |
| Protein powders | 90 of 96 | a sweetener |
| Fruit yogurts | 79 of 95 | natural flavor |
| Oat milk | 51 of 76 | gellan gum |
| Dark chocolate | 57 of 97 | soy lecithin |
| Frozen vegetables | 25 of 85 | modified food starch |
Every frozen vegetable product with a marker was sauced, seasoned or a potato product like tots. The bags of plain peas, broccoli or spinach listed just the vegetable.
NOVA’s own list
The researchers who built the system give the typical ultra-processed foods as soft drinks, sweet or savory packaged snacks, ice cream, chocolate and candy, mass-produced packaged bread and buns, cookies and cakes, breakfast cereals, cereal and energy bars, “fruit” yogurts, instant sauces, soups and noodles, and nuggets, sausages, burgers and hot dogs.
With chips and chocolate, check the bag or the bar. The test is the label, so a bag that lists only potatoes, oil and salt has no marker on it, and a bar of chocolate, sugar and cocoa butter doesn’t either.
The ones that aren’t
| Food | Group |
|---|---|
| Frozen peas, broccoli, spinach | 1, whole or barely changed |
| Dried pasta of flour and water | 1 |
| Plain yogurt, milk, rolled oats | 1 |
| Canned beans, canned tomatoes, canned tuna | 3, processed |
| Cheddar and other block cheese | 3 |
| A loaf of flour, water, salt and yeast | 3 |
What we’d do
- Climb down your staples one at a time in the swap ladder, which keeps protein, fiber and sugar beside each rung.
- Test your eye in spot the ultra-processed.
- Keep the frozen and canned basics. They aren’t the problem.
4 sources
- Monteiro et al., NOVA. The star shines bright, World Nutrition, 2016worldnutritionjournal.org
- Monteiro et al., Ultra-processed foods: what they are and how to identify them, Public Health Nutrition, 2019pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Williams et al., Ultra-processed food consumption in youth and adults: United States, August 2021 to August 2023, NCHS Data Brief 536, 2025cdc.gov
- Open Food Facts, US products in the categories sliced breads (94 ingredient lists), fruit yogurts (95), oat-based drinks (76), protein bars (97), protein powders (96), dark chocolates (97) and frozen vegetables (85), checked with this site's label checker on November 14, 2026us.openfoodfacts.org
