The international NOVA classification sorts foods by the extent of industrial processing into four groups: Group 1 unprocessed or minimally processed (fruit, vegetables, dal, milk, eggs, plain rice, atta), Group 2 culinary ingredients (oil, salt, sugar, ghee), Group 3 processed foods (paneer, breads, salted nuts, canned fruits and vegetables), and Group 4 ultra-processed foods (cold drinks, packaged biscuits and chips, instant noodles, breakfast cereals with added sugar, packaged “health drinks” and energy bars, ready-to-eat curries, ice cream).
ICMR-NIN’s Dietary Guidelines for Indians 2024 (Guideline 15) provides an Indian-context HFSS / UPF threshold for cooked foods, where a per-100 g serving above any of the following limits flags the food as one to restrict:
- Energy: > 250 kcal / 100 g
- Total added fat: > 4.2 g / 100 g
- Added sugar: > 3 g / 100 g
- Salt: > 0.625 g / 100 g (≈ 250 mg sodium)
Most packaged Indian snacks (chips, namkeen, biscuits, mixture), bakery items, sweetened breakfast cereals, cold drinks, sugarcane and packaged fruit juices, and malt-based drinks exceed at least one of these limits. NIN-DGI is explicit on a related point: fortifying or “enriching” a UPF does not make it a wholesome food — fortification compensates only for selected micronutrient gaps, not the underlying HFSS profile.
Why does this matter? UPF intake is consistently associated with higher risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidaemia, and all-cause mortality across Indian and global cohorts. The mechanism appears to be a combination of high energy density, easy over-consumption, low fibre and protein, and chronic high salt + added sugar load — independent of any single nutrient.
Practical orientation: build the day around NIN-DGI’s My Plate (whole cereals and millets, dal and pulses, vegetables, fruit, milk and curd, a small amount of nuts and seeds, rotated cooking oils, iodised salt). Treat UPFs as occasional rather than daily, and read labels using the per-100 g thresholds above.