Oatly did something bold: they put “Trust the Processed” right on their packaging
While most food brands sprint away from the word processed, they leaned into it.
Their argument is straightforward: Processing can improve food safety, extend shelf life, reduce waste, and sometimes even preserve nutrients.
Under the NOVA food classification system (a classification system designed to group foods into ultraprocessed/processed/minimally processed), some of their products would qualify as ultra-processed. Others — like their organic oat milk (oats, water, salt) — would not.
This nuance rarely makes it into mainstream food debates.
Current conversations around ultra-processed foods are polarized. The narrative is often binary - 'all processing is bad'. This can lead to poor decisions on the part of the consumer.
From a nutrition science perspective: Not all processing is created equal.
Ingredient quality and formulation matter more than labels.
Pasteurization is processing. So is fermenting yogurt with Streptococcus thermophilus. So is fortifying flour with folate. Lumping everything industrially processed into one moral bucket obscures meaningful differences.
The plant-based category has often positioned itself as the “clean” alternative. But clean does not automatically mean minimally processed. And minimally processed does not automatically mean healthier.
What stands out here is not the slogan. It is the willingness to address the tension directly.
Transparency shifts the conversation from fear to literacy.
From noise to knowledge.
The processed food debate is not going away. But it could become more precise.
The real question we should be asking isn’t: Is it processed?
It is: What was done to it — and why?
That's the kind of nuance I want to drive with Nuven.
The future of food isn’t about eliminating processing.
It is about understanding it.
At Nuven, we’re building tools that decode ingredients, context, and formulation — so families can make decisions based on evidence, not headlines.
That’s the bar we’re setting.