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Food processing is an umbrella term for all the various things we do to raw food ingredients to create the food and drink products that we consume across our diets. Something as simple as heating up ingredients through cooking is a form of food processing.

Basically, food is processed when its raw form has been changed. So, if you’re not eating food in the form from which it came out the ground or from an animal, you are consuming processed food.

Humans have been processing food for millennia¹. Whether it was the first hunters cooking raw meat over a fire, the first gatherers pulping and mixing fruits, or the first farming communities milling grain, food processing is humanity’s oldest innovation and a staple of our diet throughout history.

Interestingly, humans are the only mammal species whose digestive system cannot sufficiently digest a wide range of raw foods². Our digestive system works much more efficiently when we process our food to make it more edible and to unlock inherent nutrients.

Food processing can describe a number of preparation and cooking techniques that we apply to our food and can also include methods of packaging and preservation.

To name but a few, food processing can include:

• Blanching
• Boiling
• Chopping
• Cooking/heat treatment
• Curing
• Drying/dehydrating
• Extruding
• Fermenting
• Freezing
• Marinading
• Mashing
• Melting
• Milling/grinding
• Mixing
• Pasteurising
• Pickling
• Refrigerating
• Smoking
• Soaking/hydrating
• Steaming
• Washing

We process foods when we cook at home, in restaurants, and at-scale in food factories for many reasons:

• Access: to make food products that can be easily transported and stored without spoiling, not just in the local area in which they were grown
• Affordability: to keep costs lower than would be possible in a domestic setting. For example, a聽2020 from Belgium, found processed foods were cheaper 2.35x cheaper per calorie.
• Choice: to provide consumers with a diverse range of food choices that may not otherwise be available in their local area in that particular season
• Convenience: to provide food choices to consumers that can be quickly and easily prepared and consumed
• Health: to provide food choices suitable for allergies, certain health conditions, infant nutrition, and medial nutrition
• Longevity: to prolong the shelf-life of food products
• Nutrition: to break down natural nutrient blockers and unlock the nutrients in certain foods, which our digestive systems would otherwise be unable to absorb (e.g. phytic acid in legumes, which reduces our absorption of minerals when consumed in its raw form – cooking breaks it down)
• Safety: to eliminate natural bacteria and toxins and prevent spoilage
• Sustainability: to provide food products that require fewer resources to make and which have a reduced impact on the environment聽 (e.g. plant-based proteins or utilising waste products)
• Taste: to improve the taste of certain foods that would otherwise be largely inedible in their raw forms (e.g. coffee, cocoa beans, or grains)

Everyone benefits from food processing.

Food processing is essential to providing food for all people in a modern society.

Food processing gives us the choice to use a diverse range of products, sometimes out of-season, in our diet that we would simply be unable to produce from scratch on our own in the quantities required.

The food and drinks processing industry in Europe is also the continent’s leading manufacturing sector, employing 4.7m people, generating 鈧�250bn in value added, and buying some 70% of all EU agri-food produce.

The food processing industry support jobs and local communities, both rural and urban, up and down the value chain.

Food additives are food ingredients, many naturally-occurring, which are added to a food in small quantities for the express purpose of fulfilling a desired practical function.

These may include:

• Antioxidants to prevent fat reacting with oxygen and causing colour changes or rancidity
• Colours used to improve, restore, or add colour
• Emulsifiers, stabilisers and gelling agents help mix ingredients
• Preservatives to improve shelf-life and prevent spoilage
• Sweeteners to give a sweet taste with no or low caloric content
• Raising agents to increase the volume of a dough or batter

• Ascorbic acid stops fruits from oxidising and becoming brown, it is also known by its other name 鈥� vitamin C, and codified in Europe as E-300.
• Lecithin, naturally found in eggs, acts as an emulsifier, and is codified in Europe as E-322
• Pectins, naturally found in apples, act as a gelling agent, and are codified in Europe E-440
• Carrageenan, a form of聽 algae, acts as a gelling agent and is codified in Europe as E-407

Although the names might not seem familiar to us, each of them, as with all additives approved in Europe, have been researched extensively and approved safe to use by independent scientists and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

No, all food additives used in the EU must be approved following a rigorous safety evaluation by EFSA, and can only be authorised if they do not pose a risk to health at the level of proposed use.

Food safety is a prerequisite of producing food and drink products in Europe. If it’s not safe, it’s not food.

Food and drink producers actively participate in the safety evaluation of food additives by:

• Working with the European Food Safety Authority to establish appropriate usage levels of food additives
• Using additives strictly within their conditions of approval following a rigorous safety evaluation by EFSA
• Working with additives producers whenever any technical information is requested by EFSA for the safety evaluation of the specific substance.

The plants and animal products that we use as food sources can contain some naturally-occurring yet undesirable substances.

We process these food ingredients to make them safe to eat and to remove these undesirable substances.

Process contaminants are undesirable substances that sometimes form when cooking certain foods.

These substances can occur whether the food is processed at home, in a restaurant, or in the food factory.

They are not intentionally added to food but may be present as a result of processing techniques during certain stages of production.

Baking, frying, grilling or barbecuing, either at home or in manufacturing, can sometimes lead to the formation of these undesirable substances.

The food and drink industry employs the highest levels of monitoring and mitigation to control these substances and ensure that food is safe.

If it’s not safe, it’s not food.

Some contaminants may be unhealthy for us if consumed to excess.

The food and drink industry employs the highest levels of monitoring and mitigation to control these substances and ensure that food is safe.

If it’s not safe, it’s not food.

The first place to start controlling for potential contaminants is at the farm-level. This includes monitoring factors like plant or animal breed, soil conditions, seasonality, harvest time, and storage conditions.

The food and drink industry puts in place a number of mitigation techniques to control process contaminants and keep them at levels as low as can be reasonably achieved, following good farming and manufacturing practices.

Food and drink products undergo strict safety and quality controls to check the presence of any process contaminants.

The EU food and drink industry is Europe鈥檚 largest manufacturing industry and the largest in half of all EU Member States.

Europe鈥檚 food and drink processing industry employs 4.7 million people, generates 鈧�250bn added-value for Europe鈥檚 economy, and exports 鈧�182 billion worth of product around the world.

Moreover, the industry is comprised of 99% small and medium-sized enterprises.

See our Data & Trends report for more.

The food and drink processing industry supports communities across the value chain, particularly in rural and agricultural communities, from which the industry buys some 70% of everything that comes off Europe鈥檚 farms³.

Food we associate with agricultural and rural communities in Europe, like cured meats, cheeses, jams and honeys, vegetable preserves, and country breads, are all the result of food processing.

Industrial food processing takes advantage of economies of scale to keep costs lower than would be possible in a domestic setting, by using innovative food processing technologies and access to diverse ingredient sources.

• Food processing has helped slash the cost of feeding a family in Europe, as a proportion of household expenditure, from 64% in 1950⁴ to just 14.3% in 2021⁵.
• A 2020 from Belgium, found that processed foods were 2.35x cheaper per calorie than minimally-processed foods.
• A 2024 curated two menus, one of mostly minimally-processed foods and the other of mostly so-called ‘ultra-processed foods’; it found that the minimally-processed menu was more than twice as expensive and expired three times faster than the ‘UPF’ menu, without being healthier.

Costs can be reduced further thanks to processing techniques which help to extend the shelf-life of food and drink products and maximise inputs, thus reducing spoilage and wasted resources, either in the factory, on the supermarket shelf, or at home.

Like all manufacturing, food processing has an impact on the environment. And the scope of this impact depends on the type of food processing undertaken. Chopping and cutting for example, has a lower impact and is less energy-intensive than heating or cooling.

On aggregate though, the food and drink industry takes advantage of economies of scale to produce a wide variety of food and drink products to satisfy the dietary needs of all people.

Food processing allows raw food to last longer and be easily transported and stored, ready for consumption, whilst limiting spoilage and reducing food waste.

Processing can reduce post鈥恏arvest losses and increase the use of by鈥恜roducts.

Commercial food manufacturing operations are highly-efficient in the conversion of raw materials into consumer products through forecast planning and efficient procurement.

The food and drink industry is continually seeking to minimise waste streams, use new or modified processing methods, in鈥恜lant treatment, and unlock circular economies.

Energy represents more than 75% of EU greenhouse gas emissions and as one of the largest manufacturing sectors in Europe, the entire food and drink chain is a major energy user.

The emissions impact of food processing depends on the different methods of processing, with simply chopping and packing having a lower impact and energy-use than heating and cooling.

By integrating climate change in their business strategies, European food and drink manufacturers have achieved a 21% reduction in carbon emissions per unit of value added between 2008 and 2018, that is to say, the industry is getting more efficient at producing food and drink products.

And between 2000 and 2015, the food industry cut its energy consumption by nearly 20%.

But there is more to do, that’s why the industry is investing heavily in renewable energy sources and in the circular economy, to preserve the value of the resources that go into making our food and drink products.

Food processing at scale allows us to divert waste streams and by-products for re-use in the production cycle, whether its grain husks fuelling a biomass boiler, or harvesting residual heat from cooking to use in other parts of the production.

If global food waste was a country, it would be the 3rd largest emitter of greenhouse gases behind the US and China⁶.

In Europe, 52 million tonnes of food produced is lost or wasted⁷. That’s why, the EU food and drink industry is committed to halving edible food waste across the supply chain by 2030.

Food processing helps prevent food waste by taking advantage of economies of scale and optimising the use of raw materials, from peels, to seeds, to husks, to wastewater and more – all can be reused in one way or another, whether in another part of the factory, the wider agri-food chain, or beyond.

What’s more, the food and drink industry provides consumers with products which are long-lasting and resistant to spoilage, thanks to industrial best practices and the use of optimal packaging and consumer information.

Yes, food processing makes many food and drink products safer and longer-lasting.

Certain food processing techniques invariably improve the safety of storing and consuming certain food products.

Food processing techniques like drying, cooking, canning, freezing, or pasteurisation are just some of the many ways in which food processing makes our food and drink safer to consume and longer-lasting.

The advantage of processing food at-scale, in a food factory, is that we can deploy a large number of quality control resources and expertise to ensure the safest production techniques possible are applied to the making of our food.

Food processing and processed foods are the backbone of global food security.

• Crisis: When food is in short supply, emergency food aid is necessary and the processed food industry steps up. Those foods remain stable even at room temperature, when refrigerated conditions are not always available. To take a recent example, look at the food trucks supplying people in Ukraine that have been loaded with infant formula, cereals, long-life milk, canned fruits and vegetables, tea and coffee, pasta and rice – all processed foods. 
• Day-to-day: Food processing techniques like canning, freezing, and dehydration extend the shelf life of perishable products, reducing food waste, and ensuring a more stable food supply. This helps store food for longer periods, making it available during off-seasons and in regions where fresh produce might not be readily available. 
• Staples: The majority of global food consumption is centred around major staples, many of which include processed foods like rice, sugar, breads, and other milled grains.

Food processing plays an essential role in providing healthy and balanced diets for all.

• Fortified foods: In the course of processing, micronutrients can be added to food, such as vitamins, minerals, and other ingredients to support one’s health and provide an added source of essential nutrition.
• Food safety: Food processing techniques like drying, cooking, canning, freezing, or pasteurisation are just some of the many ways in which food processing makes our food and drink safer to consume and longer-lasting.
• Reformulation: In some cases, food products can be reformulated to reduce salt, sugar, and fat levels and improve the product’s nutritional offering. Though complex and not applicable for all products, reformulation can make a positive impact on consumer health.
• Specialised nutrition: Food processing allows us to make food products suitable for people with allergies and certain health conditions as well as infant nutrition, sports nutrition, and medical nutrition.
• Unlocking nutrients: For some foods, certain processing techniques can even help breakdown certain nutrient-blocking substances that naturally occur in some raw foods (e.g. phytic acid in legumes, which reduces our absorption of minerals when consumed in its raw form – cooking breaks it down).

Whatever your diet, the processing food industry makes the food and drink products that enable it. Whether you prefer your milk to come from cows, goats, almonds, soy or oats, food processing enables that decision.

No. The level of food processing in and of itself has no bearing on whether a food is ‘healthy’ or not.

It is the final nutritional composition of a product that has the most impact on our dietary health, not the level of processing.

Some processed foods can be energy dense, high in calories, saturated fats, and salt, or low in dietary fibre, protein, vitamins, and minerals. Eating too much of these foods is not good for our health. Indeed, overconsumption of anything is not good for one’s health.

To achieve a healthy and balanced diet, we need to consider the overall nutritional value of the products we eat, how often we eat them, and how this fits with our personal lifestyles.

Like many regions around the globe, Europe faces a number of public health challenges. Over 50% of adults⁸ and one in three children in Europe⁹ are overweight or obese. It is estimated that in 2019, there were 950,000 deaths attributable to diet-related factors and while the death rate attributable to diet-related factors has thankfully fallen in Europe over the last 25 years, the pace of that reduction has slowed in the past decade¹⁰.

Obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases are caused by a myriad of factors, not least of which includes one鈥檚 own level of activity, lifestyle, and potential congenital risk factors but chief amongst which sits an unbalanced diet of poor nutritional quality.

The food and drink industry has a role to play in shaping dietary patterns and promoting healthier choices and food environments. By working together with policymakers, health professionals, and the public, food and drink makers are taking steps to reduce the prevalence of diet-related disease and improve dietary health and well-being of all consumers.

The EU food and drink industry is playing its part by reformulating products to reduce calories, fats, salt, and sugars, while boosting fibre, protein, and fruits and vegetables, providing appropriate portion sizes, investing in nutrition literacy, and supporting science and food innovation.

See our聽Industry Actions page on nutrition for concrete examples.

Foods are packaged to protect them from spoilage and damage during transportation and storage, regardless of whether they are processed or raw food.

Packaging protects our food from light, air, humidity, external contaminants, and microorganisms, all of which change the taste and quality of a product, with consequences for food safety.

In normal circumstances, but especially during humanitarian crises, food packaging plays a vital role in keeping foods shelf-stable, easily transportable, and accessible for all.

An oft-overlooked aspect of packaging is its function for labelling. Labelling such as that which can be printed on or affixed to the packaging material provides consumers with essential information about the nutritional characteristics of the product and proper consumption and storage instructions.

For many years, the food and drink industry has been working on reducing packaging and the environmental impact of packaging.

In a lot of cases, food packaging cannot simply be removed because packaging plays a vital role in protecting and preserving food products, processed and non-processed alike.

Some packaging, particularly plastics, can end up in nature and contributes to the growing problem of plastic pollution.

As a major user of packaging, including plastics, the food and drink industry has a key role to play in limiting the use of packaging, considering the best packaging materials, and contributing to reuse, collection and recycling of packaging waste.

In Europe, all materials used in food and drink packaging must be rigorously researched and authorised by the European Food Safety Authority before they can be put into contact with food, not just from a human health perspective but also from an environmental perspective.

This is one of the main challenges in reducing existing packaging because if you want to use new recycled materials, you need to first research its safety with food and then go through the authorisation process.

The concept of 鈥榰ltra-processed foods’ was invented by a Brazilian professor Carlos Monteiro (University of S茫o Paulo) in 2009¹¹. The following year, Prof. Monteiro presented his NOVA food classification scheme¹², which categorises foods into four groups based on the extent and purpose of processing:

1. Unprocessed or minimally processed foods;
2. Processed culinary ingredients;
3. Processed foods;
4. Ultra-processed food and drink products.

Unfortunately, the NOVA scheme is relatively imprecise as to what definitively constitutes an ‘ultra-processed food’ but a broad rule-of-thumb is that it includes those foods chiefly made from substances derived from other foods and so-called ‘cosmetic’ additives (see here for more on additives).

Ultimately, the very concept of ‘ultra-processed foods’ and how to identify them remains contested science. See here a collection of 70+ peer-reviewed scientific papers, critiquing the ‘UPF’ concept and the NOVA scheme.

Unfortunately, due to the imprecise nature of the NOVA classification scheme, it is hard to definitively say what is or what is not a UPF.

But let’s say we can identify whether a product is a ‘UPF’. Firstly, whenever we think about a food’s healthfulness we need to consider what鈥檚 in it? Is it relatively high in calories, fat, salt, or sugars? Is it relatively low in dietary fibre, protein, vitamins and minerals? How often are you eating it? Are you leading an active lifestyle? All of these questions need to be taken into account when choosing food that best fits your diet.

A croissant from your local baker may not be considered ‘ultra-processed’ by some readings of the NOVA scheme, but it is relatively high in calories and fat, whilst the wholegrain loaf at the supermarket is a rich source of dietary fibre and micronutrients, but it could be considered as ‘ultra-processed’. The former is a treat to be enjoyed now and again, the latter a daily source of essential nutrients. It is not the processing that matters, it is the nutritional composition.

All foods can be part of a healthy diet, where consumers consider the overall nutritional value of what they鈥檙e eating, how much, how often, and how it fits in with their lifestyle. Whether a food is processed or not, does not tell us whether it is ‘healthy’ or not.

There is a growing body of research, largely observational studies, which have shown some associations (i.e. how two variables relate to one another but importantly, not cause-effect) between the intake of ‘UPFs’ and certain health outcomes but it remains unclear what mechanism is driving these findings.

Additionally, when reading such research, we need to understand the pros and cons of certain scientific methods. The majority of these studies are observational, which means that large numbers of people are asked to report on their diet over a given time period and then some years later their health is checked to see if any patterns can be drawn from what they ate and their health.

One of the drawbacks with observational methods is that any patterns can鈥檛 be pinned exclusively on diet, and people aren鈥檛 always able, or willing, to track their diet accurately. Meanwhile, a whole host of 鈥榗onfounders鈥� could also be to blame (e.g. did the subject smoke? did they live a sedentary lifestyle?) 鈥� and it鈥檚 virtually impossible to rule them all out in an observational study. With these methods, we cannot show that ‘A causes B’.

Randomised control trials (RCT), where people are picked at random, benchmarked against an equally random 鈥榗ontrol鈥� group, are a better way to study cause and effect in our health. But forcing people to stick to a diet for years, as would be needed in an RCT on this issue, would be impractical. Only one, short term, randomised trial has so far been carried out, and scientists are still unclear as to what was behind the outcome.

What’s more, any research based on a concept as imprecise and as confusing as ‘UPF’ classifications already begins from a flawed baseline.

Ultimately, the science on this remains contested and uncertain. We need more research, particularly on what is specifically driving some of these associations. See here a collection of 70+ peer-reviewed scientific papers examining the limitations of such studies as they pertain to ‘UPF’.

Incomplete information, inconclusive evidence, and a lack of scientific consensus can make it difficult to decide on the appropriate response to a perceived issue.

The precautionary principle doesn鈥檛 simply say 鈥渋f there is risk, no matter how small, you must act鈥�. The use of ‘precaution’, within risk management decisions, needs to be balanced by the trade-offs between costs and benefits.

Precautionary measures to reduce one risk can lead to new risks elsewhere, which is particularly relevant when talking about changes that could affect our entire food systems, such as targeting so-called ‘ultra-processed foods’.

What we do know about dietary health is that eating too much of foods that are relatively high in calories, fat, salt, and sugar, or relatively low in protein, dietary fibre, and vitamins and minerals, is not good for us.

What’s more, public authorities across Europe, including the , , and , have all examined the existing evidence and they have all rejected the use of the ‘ultra-processed food’ concept as a basis for developing public health policy because it lacks scientific consensus and it risks undermining existing public health efforts.

The EU food and drink industry will continue to play its part by reformulating products to more nutritious recipes, reducing portion size, investing in nutrition literacy, and supporting our better scientific understanding of our food.

The food and drink industry follows closely all developments in nutrition science and remains open to exploring drivers of poor dietary health.

Ultimately though, the concept of ‘UPFs’ is contested science and it is currently not a suitable framework for public health discussions. That鈥檚 why public authorities across Europe, including the , , and , all reject the use of the ‘ultra-processed food’ concept as a basis for developing public health policy because it lacks scientific consensus and it risks undermining existing public health efforts.

The EU food and drink industry wants to help solve public health challenges and we think food processing can help provide the solutions, from reformulating new nutritious products, developing more sustainable foods, and providing affordable food choices to suit all diets (see here for more on nutrition).

Well-established food nutrition science tells us that the best way to tackle obesity and non-communicable diseases is to focus on the nutritional content of a food and how often you consume it, in conjunction with what type of lifestyle you lead.

In sum: Eat fewer foods that are high in fat, salt, and sugar; eat more foods that are high in dietary fibre, protein, and vitamins and minerals; and lead a more active lifestyle.

‘UPF’ classifications like NOVA lack scientific rigor, are based on faulty assumptions, are confusing, and risk a raft of unintended consequences.

The food and drink industry follows closely all developments in nutrition science and remains open to exploring the drivers behind poor dietary health. Emerging research around energy density and texture hold some clues as to what might be driving some of the聽associations in existing ‘UPF’ studies and we take this research seriously.