Please add to the NOVA 4 list

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At least for German products many which belong to the NOVA group 4 are missed and are only NOVA 3.

  • “modifizierte Stärke” = “modified starch” = chemically or physically treated plant (wheat, corn) starch to modify its properties
  • “Glukosesirup” = “glucose syrup” = plant (wheat, corn) starch treated with enzymes (amylases and amyloclucosidases) to split it in shorter chains up to glucose
  • “Glucose-Fructose-Sirup” = “glucose-fructose-syrup”, also known as “high fructose corn syrup” (HFCS), from enzyme treated starch as before, “Glukose” (glucose) and “Fruktose” (fuctose) in products are in many cases produced in this way, and should be also added
  • “*extrakt” e.g “Gewürzextrakt” = “*extract” e.g. “spice extract” = “100% natural” raw materials, from whatever sources, which has been fractional extracted and optionally mixed to form the declared extract, used as “natural” aroma in most cases
  • “*erzeugnis” e.g. “Milcheiweißerzeugnis” = catch-all declaration for all kinds or industrial proccessed “100% natural” raw substances
  • “whey protein concentrate” or “WPC” = size-fractionated whey protein as waste from cheese production, filtered by size by pressing it through menbranes

I think the better solution is to compute the NOVA-group as float by the percent content of “traditional food” still present in products. Many ingredients must not be declared (e.g. the ones which have only a in-factory-function, while they are may be still present in the final product) or enzymes or the long list of FL-numbers for flavours, allowed in the EU which exist as a refenrence for the manufacturers only. The (incomplete) integredient lists are still there, so the comsumer feels informed, but is not in reality.

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Hi @fabi2, thanks for your suggestions.

I opened a bug with your first remarks: Better computation of NOVA 4 in German · Issue #10415 · openfoodfacts/openfoodfacts-server · GitHub (@benbenben might be interested)

On the second part, I think it’s interesting !
Still Nova is a score described in a scientific publication, and at the moment we stick to it’s definition.
Maybe we could have a complementary information to warn users about potentially hidden by-products.

Do you know of any heuristic to have product at risk. Do you have scientific publications to point to ?

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@alex: Thanks for trying to address the problem via a github issue.

Here also my latest comments from #nova on (Slack):

It would be more helpful to me to try to estimate the percentage of a products ingredients, where unmodified or only traditional processing techniques (long-term known good from a whitelist (will be hard enough, due to incomplete (e.g. enzymes) and “clean(ed) labels”)) have been used, instead of the “now even cheaper” replacements, which seems to be the real problem of utra-processed foods. So the NOVA score should be more fine-grained between 3 and 4 depending on the contents of cheap industry replcements and amount of contents from the chemical industry.

There are also other things such positive looking labels such as “only natural intgredients” should be better “we used natural raw-substances as source to get our chemical substances from through extraction, refining and other chemical processes”. So this is negative feature of a product, as it is an indicator for a high degree of obfuscation. The same applies to the label “de:Ohne Gentechnik” (without genome techniques), commonly found on cheese in Germany, which was produced with lab(-replacements) produced with geneticly modified bacterias. So this obfuscation should be bettrer “GMO free”.

The NOVA score seems to be the most advanced scientific backed concept in the moment for finding real food.

But it has the problem, that the food industry points to the issue, that if you have an product without any additives (on the label), it is NOVA 3 and considered healthy and if you than add one, it is NOVA 4, even as it may remain the same in most times.

So, after reading “Food Design” by Udo Pollmer and Monika Niehaus, you have the general problem, that the food industry always tries to replace every expensive component with cheaper replacements (including waste recycling, such as for whey, which is problematic for the ground water), so it is better to look which content of the product can still be considered food.

In addition to taking the weak German declaration lagistlation to EU level. So e.g. every substance, which has only an in-factory function, must not declared on the label, even if it is still present in the final product.

Same applies to many substances from natural sources, so e.g.enzymes, which have not to declared in the EU, even if used in bakeries for ages and also for things such as peeling off mandarines before they are put in cans or modern juice production through “enzymatic total liquifying” of the fruits.

So the better solution then the NOVA score seems to me to using the incomplete and clean(ed) label declaration (Udo Pollmer: “It’s only there for the customer to feel infomed, but he isn’t in reality.”) and try to estimate to which amount a product can still considered food and is not an “eatable chemical substances” (or physical, including such things like using electricity for food conservation).

An other idea is optional negative score for some labels or other obfuscation and maybe ingrdients such as “whole grain” (besides from some tragitional products, still considered “healthy” by German nutritional “specialists” association DGE (but the human have baked bread instead of eating the grains, considered healthy)) and veganism.

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This issue is about the same problem that I have, of the NOVA score being to coarse to be really helpful for food selection.

Sorting by NOVA score, number of additives and amount of sugar is a bad working workaround, as some traditional additives (e.g. E220-E228) may be acceptable for sulfor unsensitive persons, for others less tolerable additives this also depends on the amount found in the product.

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Thank @fabi2 for your insight that I really find valuable.

Yes Nova is far from enough, and is not to be considered alone. And yes we would hope to have better legislation concerning transparency.

We do what we things is doable today, hoping to bring higher awareness which in turn can push policy makers to be more brave.

If you have features idea, based on what we have, they are welcome.

We hope to be able to push a bit personal score in the future to be able to rate any additive or any ingredient.