The dark side of Nutriscore: this is how companies mock it

The Nutriscore is a front labeling system intended to provide users with clear nutritional information.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
13 March 2023 Monday 23:54
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The dark side of Nutriscore: this is how companies mock it

The Nutriscore is a front labeling system intended to provide users with clear nutritional information. This acts, according to the words of the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU), "like a nutritional traffic light: it is a classification system of 5 letters and colors, in which the dark green A is the healthiest option and the E red the worst, going through B, C and D”.

The algorithm on which Nutriscore is based was developed in 2005 by scientists at the University of Oxford, with the initial objective of regulating advertising aimed at children. In 2017 it was validated by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) of the United Kingdom and, shortly after, France was the first country in the European Union to adopt its use. It was followed by Belgium, Germany and Spain (which implemented it in early 2021) and various countries are currently discussing its introduction.

“The objective of the Nutriscore is to facilitate the purchase to the consumer, since it summarizes the nutritional characteristics of the product in a simple way. Taking into account that sometimes we have problems interpreting labels, a priori it is good news that various countries have voluntarily adopted it to simplify decision-making for consumers", explains Miguel Ángel Lurueña, PhD in Science and Technology from Los Alimentos and author of the blog Gominolas de Petróleo and the book Don't mess with food (Destino, 2021), a guide that teaches, among other things, how to combat misinformation about food.

However, the implementation of Nutriscore in Spain has not been without controversy from the beginning, since there have been some situations that are difficult for the consumer to understand. “As soon as Nutriscore was born, we began to see things that caught our attention: for example, that an olive oil could have a D (a bad score) and a Diet Coke had an A, that is, the best Nutriscore score. ”, explains Lurueña. Although many consumers are unaware of this, this is because Nutriscore rates foods from the same family, so it is not useful for comparing different foods. Therefore, "the creators of Nutriscore had to clarify that an A does not necessarily mean that the product is healthy, but that within the group to which it belongs, it is the one with the best composition", clarifies the author of Gominolas de Petróleo.

This means, then, that a system that was created with the aim of providing consumers with the necessary information on the quality of the products they consume can be confusing if they do not know how to interpret it. In fact, according to Lurueña, "it is true that it is intuitive to compare absolutely, so it has been seen that it does not quite work intuitively."

Also, as usually happens, made the law, made the trap. So that "manufacturers do not stop finding ways to obtain a favorable score in Nutriscore", which means that we find products that are clearly not healthy -not even if we compare them with others in the same category- and that, without However, they have scores of A and B in this system. This is the case, for example, of some children's breakfast cereals, with a very high sugar content, which achieve good scores in Nutriscore by applying some modifications to their composition. Lurueña explains it: “This system establishes that there are elements that score negatively. They are calories, sugars, saturated fats and salt. On the contrary, those that score positively are fruits and vegetables, fiber, protein and nuts”. Therefore, to calculate the final score in Nutriscore, calculations are made of the positive and negative scores and a final grade is obtained, which is what gives rise to the corresponding letter and color on the traffic light.

Taking this system into account, it is easy to understand how some companies manage to play with the positive and negative points "practically to the millimeter" to obtain a good score. "Since the scores are public, some companies calculate how much exact sugar must be removed to reduce the negative points or how much fiber must be added to mask the negative sugar score," explains the expert. This game, then, allows you to reduce from here and add from there to get a good score, without necessarily meaning that we are dealing with healthy food.

A good example of the type of misunderstandings that can lead to Nutriscore is the controversy that arose with Nesquik, with a good score. “It is a case that has attracted attention for obvious reasons. This is because Nutriscore instructions state that product calculations should always be done based on how they are consumed. So, since cocoa powder is always consumed with milk, the overall calculation is not applied. not on Nesquik, but on milk with Nesquik. On the one hand, it is misleading, but on the other it is logical to evaluate the food in the way it is consumed and not in an isolated way”, points out Lurueña. The scientist gives olive oil as an example: "Taking into account that the calculation is made per 100 ml of product, in the case of olive oil we never consume 100 ml in one sitting, so it seems reasonable to evaluate it in the way we which we consume it, so that the result is a healthy product”.

On the other hand, if we take into account that taking advantage of Nutriscore is not mandatory, everything indicates that the system is susceptible to some cracks. “As a general rule, companies that know that they are going to get a good grade and be able to trick it are accepted. The others, in general, do not want to know anything about it, as it happens with soft drinks", explains Lurueña, who points out, however, that in some cases it can be a useful tool. "If we buy, say, for example, a bottle of mineral water or a bag of spinach, we already know that these will be products that will have an A, but companies put it to reinforce the idea that their product is healthy. But in the case of a pizza, we do not know to what extent it is more or less healthy if we compare it with others in the same range, the same thing that happens with other intermediate products that can be better or worse depending on their composition: this is where Nutriscore can help”, continues the expert.

However, for Lurueña, we are dealing with a system “based on a current known as nutritionism, which consists of independently evaluating food for its nutrients. What happens when nutrients are separated, instead of evaluating foods by their overall composition, is that you can fall into various traps that can mislead consumers."

The specialist recalls, in this sense, that we continue to have at our disposal a very effective element to discern the nutritional composition of food: labels. “It is true that sometimes they can be convoluted, and that sometimes strategies are carried out to twist the legislation, entangling it so that the interpretation is more complicated, but it is also true that the labels do not lie. Therefore, as consumers we also have a part of the responsibility when it comes to learning to interpret them and worrying about being educated for it: to learn to make the purchase and understand what we are buying”, affirms Lurueña.

However, for the expert there are more reliable labeling systems, such as the Healthy Eating Promotion regime, which is already in force in Latin American countries such as Chile, Peru, Mexico and Uruguay. It is a black octagon, with the edge and the letters in white and with legends such as 'Excess sugar', 'Excess sodium' or 'Excess saturated fat'. "Instead of an evaluation based on specific nutrients, this labeling allows warning about undesirable foods, so there is no way to trick or mask that content," says Lurueña.

The World Health Organization, for its part, has been in favor of frontal nutritional labeling and points out that "it must be a transparent and easily accessible system and have a monitoring and review process to carry out the necessary improvements". The OCU has also publicly shown its support for this tool and has indicated that it expects "its use to be generalized and adopted throughout the European Union".