Confronta i metodi

	NOVA Food Classification	Food-System Life Cycle Assessment
Campo	Food Agriculture Studies	Food Agriculture Studies
Famiglia	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Anno di origine	2019	2018
Ideatore	Carlos A. Monteiro and colleagues (University of Sao Paulo)	ISO 14040/14044 LCA framework; food-system synthesis by Joseph Poore & Thomas Nemecek
Tipo	Food-processing classification pipeline for diet and food-system analysis	Cradle-to-grave environmental modelling pipeline for foods and diets
Fonte seminale	Monteiro, C. A., Cannon, G., Levy, R. B., Moubarac, J.-C., Louzada, M. L. C., Rauber, F., Khandpur, N., Cediel, G., Neri, D., Martinez-Steele, E., Baraldi, L. G., & Jaime, P. C. (2019). Ultra-processed foods: what they are and how to identify them. Public Health Nutrition, 22(5), 936-941.	Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360(6392), 987-992.
Alias	NOVA, NOVA classification, Ultra-Processed Food Classification, NOVA food processing classification	Food LCA, Agri-food Life Cycle Assessment, Dietary Life Cycle Assessment, Cradle-to-Grave Food Footprinting
Correlati	4	4
Sintesi	The NOVA classification groups foods not by their nutrient content but by the nature, extent, and purpose of the industrial processing they undergo, sorting all items into four groups: unprocessed or minimally processed foods, processed culinary ingredients, processed foods, and ultra-processed foods. Developed by Carlos Monteiro and colleagues at the University of Sao Paulo, NOVA introduced ultra-processed foods (UPF) as a category — industrial formulations made largely from substances extracted from foods plus additives — and argued that this processing dimension, rather than nutrient profile alone, is central to diet and health. The 2019 paper Ultra-processed foods: what they are and how to identify them gives the operational definitions, and the share of dietary energy from ultra-processed foods has become a widely used exposure in nutrition and food-system research.	Food-system life cycle assessment (LCA) quantifies the environmental footprint of a food, meal or diet across its entire life cycle — from agricultural inputs on the farm, through processing, packaging, transport, retail and cooking, to waste disposal. Following the ISO 14040/14044 framework, an analyst defines a functional unit (such as one kilogram of food, 100 grams of protein, or 1000 kilocalories), compiles a life-cycle inventory of all inputs and emissions at each stage, characterises those flows into impact indicators (greenhouse-gas emissions, land and water use, eutrophication and acidification), and interprets the result with sensitivity and uncertainty analysis. Poore and Nemecek's 2018 Science synthesis, covering tens of thousands of farms worldwide, showed that impacts vary as much as fifty-fold among producers of the same product and that even the lowest-impact animal foods typically exceed plant substitutes — establishing LCA as the central tool for comparing the sustainability of foods and diets.