We all agree that without traffic lights on the streets, it would be a mess! Right? What about traffic light on food packages? Germany has recently welcomed the traffic light system called Nutri Score and I have already seen it in few stores. Are you all aware what Nutri Score is and how it works? Not sure about it! So, let’s have a quick look into it and after we can discuss whether it would be useful or somehow misleading. At least I can share my personal opinion and you might want to comment.
Nutri Score is a label made by five letters and five colors used to categorize food from a “healthier choice” with A and green, to a „less healthy choice” with E and red, based on nutritional profile meaning nutrients contained in 100 grams. The system was launched for the first time in France, in 2017 and then rolled out in Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, now Germany. The system is based on the similar one used in the UK, and the scale is coming from the Food Standards Agency nutrients profile system called FSA score. The final goal is to help consumers to assess the quality of the products they are buying.
How it works: every food, where the Nutri Score label should be place on, gets a score based on the quantity of “good or bad” nutrients in 100g. The good ones are fruits, vegetables, nuts, fibers and proteins; bad ones are saturated fats, sugar, sodium and calories. Well, classifying calories as “bad” is a bit extreme because it depends a bit on our individual calories balance. Without calories it’s like a car without fuel.. I guess not driving you far! The reason why many countries are adopting it, is also because apparently it was shown that it worked well in France. I tried to understand what in fact means “working well” and all studies or market researches I found, they were referring to the effectiveness of the Nutri Score during purchasing experience but not mentioning on the effectiveness on people health and reduction of diseases linked to a bad nutrition. Apparently Nutri Score worked perfectly because it is easy to be understood also for people with zero knowledge on nutrition, allows people to discriminate nutritional quality between food groups therefore it could help consumers to make healthier choices. Finally, it is effective on people under 30 and with a low socio-economic status, according to an investigation made by the French retailer E.Leclerc.
Now, my personal opinion on that. First of all it is obvious that if I am a person who has a little background in terms of nutrition and food and I see two products on shelves one with a green color and the other one with red, keeping in mind the meaning of both colors in traffic light, if I’m not concerned about any prices or anything else, I would immediately go for the green one. So in this sense the visualization of the Nutri Score or any traffic light label is working well rather than reading the nutritional values in the nutritional profile which anyway needs to be there not only because regulated by law but also because it’s important to be transparent with the customers. But is it really the product with the A and green score good for me? Is it considering my lifestyle, my daily calories consumption, my current weight and my height? And also, is it considering the amount of this product I’m going to eat during the day? Well it isn’t because the system is based only on 100 grams of each product and it consider only few ingredients or nutrients. So the biggest limitation of the system is that the quantity considered is 100 grams and it doesn’t consider presence of additives, type of ingredient or the production process the product has been gone through. Saying that the target of the system is „to help consumers to assess the quality of the products they are buying“ is not fully right. Quality of a product is the ability of the product to satisfy customers expectations and that is not only in terms of nutritional profile.
Those are probably some of the reasons why Italy did not except to use it so far: result of Nutri Score in Italy would be 85% of PDO food products being classified as a bad choice. As example I selected one of my favorite cheese: Parmigiano Reggiano PDO. This cheese is gold in Italy and it is a must to have in every fridge. I wanted to calculate the Nutri Score of it and sadly the result for 100 grams of it is D - orange meaning a bad choice. It was also surprising me that 100 grams of mozzarella light got a C - light orange meaning better than Parmigiano Reggiano PDO. Now, my question is: whoever is going to eat 100 grams of Parmigiano in one day? Even if you prepare Carpaccio and rucola (rocket salad), you will use maximum 70 g. Grated on pasta, maximum 10 g!! The Nutri Score does not take into account the needs of children to grow, athletes to get more protein intake and women need of calcium to fight osteoporosis. This cheese has a huge amount of calcium, double than the above mentioned mozzarella light, it has vitamin A and B2, it contains phosphorus and potassium and it has a considerable quantity of proteins. So why to rate it so low? Unfortunately this is the risk when applying such a strict scale and trying to categorize such a complex thing like food, focusing only on few factors and a limited amount like in this case 100 grams.
In conclusion, I believe Nutri Score is a starting point but it should not be the only action to improve health and nutrition of the population. Personally, I disagree with the decision of considering 100 grams for all products for the reasons mentioned before. I also disagree on using it for every kind of food including some specialties and traditional food.
I will deep dive into the Nutri Score topic and compare more products: so maybe I will be 100% convinced.. or maybe not.
Personally I would invest more in boosting education on basic nutrition knowledge giving as well some advice how to substitute ready to eat meal with fresh food and how to preserve the natural healthy properties of food (selecting seasonal fruits and vegetables, or less “stressful” cooking methods, etc.). Furthermore it all start with getting used to a different taste, more natural taste (less salt, less sugar) and this should be the task of parents, schools and kindergartens. Physical exercise should be also incentivized and I mean for example the introduction of a 30 minute daily routine (you do not need to be an athlete) or simply more daily movement by avoiding lift and taking stairs, walking more or biking instead of driving.
You do not need to make your life upside down to adopt an healthier lifestyle: everything starts with small steps and small decisions like in all aspect of life.
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