ArticleFoods (Basel, Switzerland)2023
Ultra-Processed Foods in the Mediterranean Diet according to the NOVA Classification System; A Food Level Analysis of Branded Foods in Greece.
Article in Foods (Basel, Switzerland), 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Are All Ultra-Processed Foods Created Equal? Descriptive Analysis of Nutritional Composition, Nutritional Quality, Energy Density and Hyperpalatability in Relation to Non-Communicable Disease Risk.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Article
- Informatics for Food Processing.ArXiv · 2025Article
- Ultra-Processed Foods in the Food Supply: Prevalence, Nutritional Composition and Use of Voluntary Labelling Schemes.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Sustainable HEalthy Diet practices: a cross-sectional analysis of an adult Greek sample.Nutrition journal · 2025Article
- Article
- Dietary habits and cognitive performance in primary school students: a cross-sectional study in Khemisset region in Morocco.Frontiers in nutrition · 2025Article
- Decoding the Foodome: Molecular Networks Connecting Diet and Health.Annual review of nutrition · 2024Review
- Industrially Produced Plant-Based Food Products: Nutritional Value and Degree of Processing.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Precision Food Composition Data as a Tool to Decipher the Riddle of Ultra-Processed Foods and Nutritional Quality.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Neurodevelopment and Dietary Intake in Toddlers-A Cross-Sectional Study from the Healthy Children 2021 Project.Nutrients · 2023Article
- Synthesis of Effect Sizes on Dose Response from Ultra-Processed Food Consumption against Various Noncommunicable Diseases.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Does the Mediterranean Dietary Pattern Promote Lower Sodium Urinary Excretion in Children?Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Beyond Plants: The Ultra-Processing of Global Diets Is Harming the Health of People, Places, and Planet.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Food Allergens in Ultra-Processed Foods According to the NOVA Classification System: A Greek Branded Food Level Analysis.Nutrients · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
While the Mediterranean diet (MD) is championed as a healthy and sustainable dietary pattern, the NOVA classification is discussed as a tool to identify ultra-processed foods and further specify healthy food choices. We tested whether the NOVA System aligns with the MD recommendations as presented in the MD pyramids. Foods from the Greek branded food composition database, HelTH, (n = 4581) were scored according to NOVA and assigned to the tiers of the traditional and/or sustainable MD pyramids. Nutritional quality was measured as nutrient content and Nutri-Score grades. NOVA identified 70.2% of all foods as UPFs, and 58.7% or 41.0% of foods included in the sustainable and the traditional MD, respectively. Although foods at the top of the pyramids were mostly (>80%) UPFs, NOVA identified > 50% of foods in the MD base as UPFs. Only 22-39% of foods in the MD base were not UPFs and of high nutritional quality (Nutri-Score A-B). NOVA has low discriminatory capacity across the MD tiers, and it restricts food choices to <30% of foods currently available in supermarkets and <60% within the recommended MD tiers. Therefore, the NOVA classification cannot always identify suitable food choices under the MD pyramid in the modern packaged food environment.
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