Is Beer Ultra-Processed?

Why Beer scores It depends

Beer is one of the oldest processed foods in human history: water, grain, hops, yeast. The NOVA system classifies standard beer as NOVA 2 (processed culinary ingredient or processed food) because brewing involves fermentation, a well-understood food process.

We checked eight beers at Tesco. The premium lagers — Stella Artois, Heineken, Birra Moretti, Madri, and Kronenbourg — all contain essentially the same short ingredient list: water, malted barley (sometimes with maize), and hops or hop extract. Hop extract is simply concentrated hops and is generally considered NOVA 2, not a UPF marker.

The picture changes with budget beers. Foster's lists glucose syrup — an industrially produced sugar used as a cheaper fermentable source instead of malt. Under NOVA classification, glucose syrup is an industrial ingredient that pushes a product to NOVA 3 or even NOVA 4. Banks's Amber Ale uses 'brewing syrup', which is another form of industrial sugar.

Alcohol-free beers present a separate issue. Peroni 0% lists 'natural flavours', which is a NOVA 3 marker. When alcohol is removed from beer, flavour is lost, and manufacturers add flavourings to compensate. This is a common pattern across the alcohol-free category.

The takeaway: the more expensive the lager, the cleaner the ingredients tend to be. Budget beers cut costs by substituting industrial sugars for malt, and alcohol-free beers rely on flavourings to replace what the dealcoholisation process removes.