What “Ultra-Processed” Actually Means
The phrase is everywhere this year, and almost nobody uses it precisely. Here is the actual definition, a three-question test that works in the grocery aisle, and an honest look at where a canned drink lands.
Where the term comes from
“Ultra-processed” comes from a classification system called NOVA, developed by researchers at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. NOVA sorts food by how much industrial processing it has been through, not by how healthy it is. That distinction is the whole thing, and it is the part that usually gets lost.
The four groups, in plain English
- Whole or minimally processed. Fruit, vegetables, eggs, milk, flour, coffee beans.
- Kitchen ingredients. Oil, butter, salt, sugar, vinegar. Things you cook with rather than eat on their own.
- Processed foods. Group one plus group two. Canned beans, bread, cheese, tinned fish, salted nuts.
- Ultra-processed. Industrial formulations built largely from substances you would not find in a home kitchen: protein isolates, hydrolysates and standardized extracts, plus the emulsifiers, humectants and colorants that hold them together.
The part most people get wrong
Processing and ultra-processing are not the same thing, and the package tells you almost nothing. A can of beans is group three. A canned drink can land in group three or group four depending entirely on what went into it.
What moves a food into group four is not heat, a can, or a long shelf life. It is whether the ingredients were taken apart and rebuilt.
A can is a preservation method. It is not a formulation.
Three questions that actually work
If you want a practical test standing in front of a shelf, these do more than scanning for long words.
- Is it made from a food, or from something pulled out of one? Juice is a food. An isolate is a fraction of one.
- Would this ingredient exist in a kitchen? Crushed leaf, yes. A spray-dried extract standardized to a percentage, no.
- Is anything here doing a job unrelated to the food? Emulsifiers, humectants and colorants exist to hold a formulation together, not to feed you.
How we built ours
We would rather show you than grade ourselves. Every can is made with juice from whole fruit, crushed moringa leaf, and ginger and turmeric root. No powders, no concentrates, no proprietary blends. The can is how we keep it fresh without a cold chain. It is not how we build it.
The full ingredient list is printed on every can. Run the three questions against it the same way you would anything else in your cart.
None of this means one drink does something for you that another does not. It means you can read the label and recognize what is on it, which is a lower bar than this category usually clears and a higher one than it usually admits to.
The standard worth watching
In January 2026, Spindrift became the first beverage brand verified under the Non-GMO Project’s new Non-Ultraprocessed (Non-UPF) Verified standard, which sets limits on industrial additives and high-impact processing rather than just checking an ingredient list. Independent verification is a better signal than any brand’s own marketing, including ours. We are looking into it.
See what is in the can
Three flavors: Lemon, Lime & Mango, Dragon Fruit & Mangosteen and Watermelon & Lime. Or start with the Discovery Pack and try all three.
Related reading: The caffeine conversation changed this summer.