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You may misinterpreting the terms used. The "foods" within quotation marks are a specific industrially processed product:

From Taraz Foods:

After extraction, the juice is taken through an evaporation process where much of the water is extracted. Most times, this is performed under low heat to make sure the flavor and all other nutritious components within are preserved. What results from the process is a thick, concentrated liquid, usually then pasteurized to eliminate unwanted bacteria. Finally, it’s packaged and shipped off to be used in various products.

This isn't fruit juice that has been reduced using kitchenware.

Mechanically separated meat:

Mechanically separated meat (MSM), mechanically recovered/reclaimed meat (MRM), or mechanically deboned meat (MDM) is a paste-like meat product produced by forcing pureed or ground beef, pork, mutton, turkey or chicken under high pressure through a sieve or similar device to separate the bone from the edible meat tissue. When poultry is used, it is sometimes called white slime as an analog to meat-additive pink slime and to meat extracted by advanced meat recovery systems, both of which are different processes. The process entails pureeing or grinding the carcass left after the manual removal of meat from the bones and then forcing the slurry through a sieve under pressure.

The resulting product is a blend primarily consisting of tissues not generally considered meat, along with a much smaller amount of actual meat (muscle tissue). In some countries such as the United States, these non-meat materials are processed separately for human and non-human uses and consumption.[1] The process is controversial; Forbes, for example, called it a "not-so-appetizing meat production process".[2]

Mechanically separated meat has been used in certain meat and meat products, such as hot dogs and bologna sausage,[2] since the late 1960s. However, not all such meat products are manufactured using an MSM process.

This isn't meat that has been cut up or even ground up using tools in the kitchen.

foods that are not heavily processed and are benign for your health to be labeled as unhealthy

With respect, which foods, according to whom, on the basis of what?

more evidence of how atrocious the whole field of nutrition is

I agree. Even studies that account for socioeconomic status and relative fitness levels are still not science, but that's epidemiological studies for you. To quote @jet@hackertalks.com, "Epidemiology is not science, it's the start of science, but it cannot establish causation." And yes, they are epidemiological studies, but Nova class 4 is is the class associated with all the chronic metabolic diseases, and yet not Nova class 1 through 3.

The Nova classification is far better than any current mainstream "dietary recommendation" or guidelines. It's a large step in the right direction, so I wouldn't brush it off as "arbitrary" just because it's not perfect. At the very least, it's useful as a tool to flag a class of products that are designed and marketed to promote overconsumption and that displace whole foods, and it needn't be the only tool we use.