Nutri-Score – everything you need to know

The European Commission has long sought an EU-wide front-of-pack­age label to help con­sumers find health­i­er food options. The hottest can­di­date is the Nutri-Score, which uses a rat­ing from A to E to indi­cate how healthy or non-healthy a prod­uct is in its cat­e­go­ry. So how does Nutri-Score work? Will it be intro­duced across the EU? What are the alter­na­tives? We take a look at all this and much more in this article.

What is Nutri-Score

Nutri-Score is a label that guides con­sumers to choose health­i­er foods. The label is placed on the front of food pack­ages so that con­sumers can quick­ly read it in stores. The label has a five-point scale with let­ters from A to E and colours from green to red. The nutri­tion­al val­ue of the food is shown on this scale by high­light­ing a letter/​colour combination.
Which letter/​colour com­bi­na­tion is high­light­ed is deter­mined by a scor­ing scale rang­ing from -15 to +40 for foods and -1 to 10 for bev­er­ages. The low­er the score, the bet­ter. The score deter­mines which colour and let­ter a prod­uct should be labelled with.

Nutri-Score for food	Nutri-Score for beverages	Nutri-Score labelling
-15 till -1	-1
0 till 2	0 till 1
3 till 10	2 till 5
11 till 18	6 till 9
19 till 40	10

How Nutri-Score is calculated

Nutri-Score is cal­cu­lat­ed as the dif­fer­ence between a favourable com­po­nent P and an unfavourable com­po­nent N:

Nutri-Score = N - P

The unfavourable com­po­nent N is deter­mined by the amount of

• calo­rie intake per hun­dred grams,
• sug­ar content,
• sat­u­rat­ed fat, and
• salt con­tent.

The prod­uct is giv­en a rat­ing between 0 and 10 for each of these cat­e­gories. The greater the quan­ti­ty, the greater the val­ue. N is the sum of these val­ues. N can there­fore vary between 0 and 40.

The favourable com­po­nent P is deter­mined by the amount of

• fruit, veg­eta­bles, legumes (includ­ing puls­es), oilseeds, rape­seed, wal­nut and olive oil (but not pota­toes, sweet pota­toes, taro, cas­sa­va and tapi­o­ca and oth­er starchy foods),
• fibre, and
• pro­tein.

The prod­uct is giv­en a rat­ing between 0 and 5 for each of these cat­e­gories. The high­er the amount, the high­er the val­ue. P is the sum of these val­ues. P can there­fore vary between 0 and 15.

If N ≥ 11, the pro­tein con­tent shall be exclud­ed from the cal­cu­la­tion of P if

• P with­out pro­tein is less than 5 for food, or
• the pro­tein con­tent is less than 10 % for beverages.

No rule without exception

There are spe­cif­ic rules for cer­tain products:

• Cheese: The pro­tein con­tri­bu­tion shall not be excluded.
• Mono-prod­ucts from oil, but­ter or fat: Nutri-Score increas­es from 0 to 10 with increas­ing pro­por­tion of sat­u­rat­ed fat­ty acids to total fat. If the ratio is less than 10, the Nutri-Score is 0 (good). If the ratio is 64 or more, the Nutri-Score is 10 (bad).
• Drinks: Nutri-Score ranges from -1 to 10 depend­ing on ener­gy den­si­ty, sug­ar con­tent and per­cent­age of fruits, legumes, puls­es, nuts, rape, wal­nut and olive oil. Only water gets a Nutri-Score of -1 (best). For a drink to get 0 on the Nutri-Score (sec­ond best), it must have 0 kcal, 0 g of sug­ar and no more than 40 per cent fruits, legumes, puls­es, nuts, rape, wal­nut and olive oil. If 100 g or 100 ml of a drink con­tains more than 270 kJ or more than 13.5 g of sug­ar or more than 80 per cent fruits, legumes, puls­es, nuts, rape, wal­nut and olive oil, it scores 10 on the Nutri-Score (worst).

In addi­tion to the above, there are a lot of sub­tleties in the Nutri-Score cal­cu­la­tion, such as milk, drink­able yoghurt, flavoured drinks, choco­late milk drinks con­tain­ing more than 80 per cent milk, soups and gaz­pa­cho and plant-based drinks not being count­ed as drinks.

See full details in Nutri-Score Frequently Asked Questions from the French pub­lic health author­i­ty, Santé Publique France. They also pro­vide a spread­sheet in English for cal­cu­lat­ing Nutri-Score.

Sugar and the Nutri-Score

When cal­cu­lat­ing the Nutri-Score, all mono­sac­cha­rides (e.g. glu­cose and fruc­tose) and dis­ac­cha­rides (e.g. sucrose) are count­ed as sug­ar. This includes both added sug­ars and sug­ars that occur nat­u­ral­ly in ingredients.

Fruit juices and the like that are added to increase sweet­ness must not be includ­ed in the cal­cu­la­tion of the ben­e­fi­cial nutri­ent com­po­nent (P) of the Nutri-Score.

The Nutri-Score thus reveals attempts to por­tray a prod­uct as health­i­er than it is through claims such as ‘no added sug­ar’ or ‘less sweet’. It works in prac­tice. A study at the University of Göttingen, Germany, has shown this.

Nutri-Score counters misleading health claims

In October 2020, they con­duct­ed a sur­vey with 1,103 par­tic­i­pants. The sur­vey asked par­tic­i­pants about their per­cep­tions after see­ing pic­tures of pack­ag­ing for three hypo­thet­i­cal prod­ucts – instant cap­puc­ci­no, choco­late mues­li and an oat drink – with dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of sug­ar claims and Nutri-Score labels.

A sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of the sur­vey results showed that when there was no Nutri-Score, reduced sug­ar claims mis­led par­tic­i­pants into believ­ing that the hypo­thet­i­cal prod­ucts were health­i­er than they actu­al­ly were. However, the pres­ence of the Nutri-Score coun­ter­act­ed these effects and reduced the mis­per­cep­tion of how healthy less nutri­tious foods were.

Nutri-Score has an effect

Is Nutri-Score effec­tive beyond coun­ter­ing mis­lead­ing health claims about sugar?

To answer this ques­tion, researchers at the Toulouse School of Economics and else­where con­duct­ed a study that exam­ined the impact of four dif­fer­ent front-of-pack nutri­tion labels, includ­ing Nutri-Score, on the pur­chas­ing behav­iour of French people.

They put 1.9 mil­lion labels on 1,266 food prod­ucts in four cat­e­gories in 60 super­mar­kets. They then analysed the nutri­tion­al qual­i­ty of 1,668,301 pur­chas­es using a nutri­tion­al pro­fil­ing sys­tem devel­oped by the UK Food Standards Agency.

The result?

Nutri-Score was found to have the most sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive impact of all the labels stud­ied. Nutri-Score increased pur­chas­es of foods in the top third of nutri­tion­al cat­e­gories by 14 per cent. However, the over­all effect was not as sig­nif­i­cant as in com­pa­ra­ble lab­o­ra­to­ry stud­ies; Nutri-Score had almost no effect on pur­chas­es of foods of poor­er nutri­tion­al qual­i­ty or foods that were not labelled.

The French researchers con­clude their arti­cle with an inter­est­ing com­ment: ‘Given French atti­tudes towards food, it remains uncer­tain whether these results would apply in oth­er countries.’

Nutrition labelling in the EU

In the European Union (EU), nutri­tion labelling is reg­u­lat­ed by Regulation (EU) No 1169/​2011 on the pro­vi­sion of food infor­ma­tion to con­sumers. According to the reg­u­la­tion, mem­ber states may rec­om­mend (not impose) a nutri­tion label that food busi­ness may use in addi­tion to the manda­to­ry nutri­tion dec­la­ra­tion. This is pro­vid­ed that the label meets sev­en requirements:

• The label must be based on sound and sci­en­tif­ic con­sumer research and not mis­lead the consumer.
• The label must be devel­oped in con­sul­ta­tion with a wide range of stakeholders.
• The label should help con­sumers under­stand the ener­gy and nutri­ent con­tent of the food.
• The label should have sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that con­sumers under­stand it.
• The label should be based on the EU rec­om­mend­ed dai­ly intakes for vit­a­mins and min­er­als or, where these do not exist, on gen­er­al­ly accept­ed sci­en­tif­ic advice on ener­gy or nutri­ent intakes.
• Labelling should be objec­tive and non-discriminatory.
• The labelling shall not impede the free move­ment of goods.

Several EU coun­tries use this option to rec­om­mend a front-of-pack­age nutri­tion label. France is one of them.

French initiative

In July 2013, the French Minister of Social Affairs and Health man­dat­ed a work­ing group to pro­pose mea­sures to help con­sumers make health­i­er food choic­es. In the autumn of 2013, the group, chaired by Professor Serge Hercberg of Sorbonne Paris North University, pro­posed 15 actions.

Action num­ber two of the pro­pos­al reads:

Set up a sin­gle nutri­tion infor­ma­tion sys­tem on the front of food packaging…

The pro­posed sys­tem, which had no name at the time, con­sists of two parts – scor­ing and labelling.

After the French bureau­crat­ic and polit­i­cal mills had fin­ished grind­ing, the actions were incor­po­rat­ed into the French Health Law of 2016. This includ­ed the intro­duc­tion of ‘a sin­gle sys­tem of nutri­tion­al infor­ma­tion on the front of food pack­ag­ing’. But details remained to be worked out before it could be launched.

Scoring scale

The scor­ing scale is based on a mod­el devel­oped in 2004-2005 to deter­mine which foods are not suit­able for mar­ket­ing to children.

It was OfCom – the UK’s broad­cast­ing reg­u­la­tor – that need­ed a sim­ple method to deter­mine whether food is ‘unhealthy’ and should not be mar­ket­ed to chil­dren. They asked the US Food Standards Agency for advice. They, in turn, com­mis­sioned the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group at Oxford University to devel­op a mod­el for nutri­ent pro­fil­ing. The result was The Nutrient Profiling Model.

It is this mod­el that Serge Hercberg and his team pro­pose to use, with some adjust­ments for French conditions.

The label

While it was easy to agree on the scor­ing scale, it was all the more chal­leng­ing to agree on the labelling. Already in the pro­pos­al to the French Minister of Social Affairs and Health, there was a sketch.

The work on the final graph­ic design of the label was lengthy, involved sev­er­al stake­hold­ers in a con­sul­ta­tion process and had many con­tro­ver­sies. After com­par­a­tive stud­ies of the per­cep­tion, under­stand­ing and use of dif­fer­ent front-of-pack labelling strate­gies, a label was final­ly agreed.

Nutri-Scores victory march through Europe

In March 2017, the French Minister of Health final­ly announced the new nutri­tion label – now called Nutri-Score.

Nutri-Score was quick­ly adopt­ed by oth­er European coun­tries. Today, it is rec­om­mend­ed by the author­i­ties in sev­en countries:

• France (2017)
• Spain (2018)
• Belgium (2018)
• Germany (2019)
• The Netherlands (2019)
• Switzerland (2019)
• Luxembourg (2020)

Major food com­pa­nies, such as Nestlé, Danone and Fleury Michon, have also endorsed Nutri-Score.

And some of the world’s largest retail­ers, includ­ing Auchan, Carrefour and Ahold Delhaize, use Nutri-Score on their pri­vate-label products.

Even the World Health Organisation (WHO) gives Nutri-Score a thumbs up.

EU-wide FOP nutrition labelling

It is fair to say that Nutri-Score is on a tri­umphal pro­ces­sion through Europe. So when the European Commission in 2020 start­ed work on the intro­duc­tion of an EU-wide FOP nutri­tion label, you’d think it was already a done deal: Nutri-Score would become the EU-wide FOP nutri­tion label.

But no!

Italy, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Latvia and Romania have sev­er­al crit­i­cal com­ments. Among oth­er things, they demand that an EU-wide FOP nutri­tion labelling

• should not pro­vide an over­all eval­u­a­tion of the food, but fac­tu­al infor­ma­tion on the indi­vid­ual nutri­ents con­tained in the product
• con­sid­er food as part of the wider con­text of the dai­ly require­ments of a healthy diet, encour­age vari­ety, mod­er­a­tion and a cor­rect bal­ance between all food groups
• take into account the speci­fici­ties of each Member State’s food cul­ture, typ­i­cal diet and nation­al nutri­tion­al guidelines
• shall exclude prod­ucts with a pro­tect­ed des­ig­na­tion of ori­gin or geo­graph­i­cal indi­ca­tion, tra­di­tion­al spe­cial­i­ties and olive oil and oth­er sin­gle-ingre­di­ent products

New player at the last minute

To add insult to injury, in February 2022 the Italian gov­ern­ment launched a counter can­di­date to Nutri-Score: their own NutrInform Battery.

The Italian Minister for Agriculture, Food and Forestry Policy, Stefano Patuanelli, explains this by say­ing that Italy ‘can­not accept the trend towards a mod­el of homolo­ga­tion of agri-food products’.

Unlike Nutri-Score, NutrInform does not pro­vide guid­ance on how healthy or unhealthy a food prod­uct is. It is left to the con­sumer to decide. Instead, the amount of ener­gy, fat, sat­u­rat­ed fat, sug­ar and salt of a sin­gle por­tion is indi­cat­ed. Its share of the rec­om­mend­ed dai­ly intake is also giv­en as a per­cent­age. This is also illus­trat­ed by sym­bols show­ing bat­ter­ies with dif­fer­ent degrees of ‘charge’.

The future of Nutri-Score

The European Commission, which was due to make a pro­pos­al on EU-wide front-of-pack­age nutri­tion labelling in autumn 2022, now hopes to make a pro­pos­al in the first half of 2023.

Will they pro­pose Nutri-Score? No, prob­a­bly not.

‘Nutri-Score is one of the front-of-pack nutri­tion­al labelling sys­tems, and there are sev­er­al of them, but this does not mean that our sys­tem will be based on Nutri-Score’, says Roser Domenech Amado, act­ing head of One Health at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Health and Consumers.

‘The dif­fer­ent options which the Commission will put for­ward will build on already exist­ing for­mats already devel­oped in the European Union, such as Nutriscore, NutrInform Battery label, or the Keyhole’, says a spokesper­son for the European Commission.

Time will tell.