Tags:
23 May 2025
We want to make minimally processed food more accessible, and one barrier we often see is knowing how to cook them in a way that doesn’t need lots of fancy equipment or cooking skills.
As part of our work with local authorities, we deliver training across the UK to get more people growing, cooking and eating minimally processed foods.
Recently, the Food for Life Lancashire team delivered training on ultra-processed and minimally processed foods to 22 teachers, who will go on to share their new skills with pupils, colleagues and the wider school community.
The session began by going through the NOVA scale, which is used to categorise ultra-processed foods. It ranges from NOVA1 – things like fresh meat and vegetables – to NOVA4, ultra-processed foods which are ready-to-eat and made using ingredients and processes you wouldn’t find in the typical home kitchen, including things like flavoured porridge oats and cheese puff crisps.
After learning about this, participants ordered various tomato-based food products along the scale: fresh tomatoes, tinned tomatoes, passata, tomato sauce, tomato pasta sauce and an tomato flavoured instant soup sachet. They were shocked to see how many unrecognisable ingredients are added into some of these foods, despite the flavours being derived from tomato.
They then discussed how people choose what to eat – price, convenience and flavour were all mentioned as priorities.
The second half of the session was all about cooking, with participants being taught how to make flatbreads, houmous, veg peeling crisps and salad dressing from scratch. They enjoyed all the food, particularly the salad dressing which they compared with a shop-bought, ultra-processed version. One participant shared that they will “cook more freshly prepared meals with children, now I have seen how easy and cheap it can be” and suggested that if more people had the time and knowledge to be able to cook from scratch, they would. For those without the experience, it’s easy to assume it’s more complicated than it is.
This is why it’s so important to pass on these skills to children from an early age. The younger they start cooking and learning about food, the more knowledge they’ll have to take into adulthood.
