The contested Nutriscore system begins to be abandoned: the evaluation criteria are changed arbitrarily
The Nutriscore system, the food traffic light that gives a color rating to different products, is starting to be abandoned even by its main followers: the German producers of plant foods. Because the criteria for assigning votes have been changed, and this has made the system less transparent and more manipulable.
The Nutriscore gives a color and a letter, from green to red, and from A to E depending on nutritional criteria decided upstream. Its purpose was to facilitate consumer choice, but the very fact that it was such a "Dry" tool, without indication of nutrients by category and without relation to the daily consumption of the product, had seen it contested in some countries, including which Italy: in fact traditional products, such as olive oil or parmesan, ended up in the "Red" category or towards the "E", simply because they did their job, that is, they were nutritious foods, without considering that a person does not drink a liter of olive oil and that the fact of being nutritious must be compared with the daily use of the good itself.
On the contrary, Nutriscore "Approves" or "Fails" regardless of its daily use and the presence of chemical additives or colorants, so a product like "Zero" drinks obtained excellent marks, and natural and traditional products were rejected .
Companies abandoned him
Now even those who supported it are abandoning it: as FAZ reports according to Bernd Eßer, an industrialist in the plant-based food sector, the food traffic light is currently losing its function as a synthetic food informant, to the point that his company is abandoning.
lThe CEO of Berief Food, a maker of plant-based products such as oat milk, was one of the first German companies to display the food traffic light on its products. Now Berief Food will be the first company to abolish them.
The problem is simple: Nutriscore is based on calculation criteria that someone creates and applies. If this regulator comes to change the criteria, products that were good until yesterday suddenly become bad and change category, displacing the manufacturer.
Until recently many of Bernd Eßer's oat milk varieties had performed very well and had excellent ratings. Since the end of the year, the situation has changed: suddenly many of its plant-based products got a bad rating, even if the recipe remained the same. Other producers of milk and plant-based drinks think the same way.
This was due to the application of a new calculation method that evaluated sugars much more rigidly, especially when fiber is scarce. On the other hand, if a product contains a lot of protein, this has a more positive impact. The change is intended to “further improve the information value of the Nutri-Score”, writes the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) on its website, but, in this way, overnight, a body can change the public's perception of food products.
Another change negatively affects the Berief score: oat milk, like cow's milk, is now classified as a drink and no longer as a food. The way the two categories are calculated is very different. and even more rigid. When it comes to drinks, the most important criterion becomes the sugar content, no matter whether this is naturally present in the product or has been added. Berief Food does not add sugar, says Eßer, but this is created during production. The original goal was for “as many products as possible to have a Nutri-Score of A or B.” But this is no longer possible. Because when it comes to drinks, only water gets the best score.
Obviously no one explains to consumers that it is not the product that has changed, but the calculation and classification system, so they are consuming exactly the same oat milk as before, and this conveys a negative image on the producers.
The easy way is the wrong way
French and German producers were happy to adopt Nutriscore, used by over 800 companies, because it would allow elaborate and refined products to have a better score, under the illusion that a letter and a color were enough to inform the consumer.
Now they too are starting to understand what it means to put their products in the hands of the evaluations of bodies which, in the end, respond to maximalist and external indications: if sugar is bad for you, then it must be eliminated always and everywhere, even if without sugar, unfortunately you don't live.
Another path could have been followed, the difficult one of educating on correct nutrition, and therefore of informing which nutritional principles are produced in foods, allowing everyone to build their own balanced diet. Instead, the easy life was chosen: one letter and off you go, which gives the idea that you should avoid a nutritious product, like cheese, always, while you can gorge yourself, for example, on coca zero. Among other things, putting yourself in the hands of those who can, from one day to the next, change the evaluation criteria
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The article The disputed Nutriscore system begins to be abandoned: the evaluation criteria are changed arbitrarily comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-contestato-sistema-nutriscore-inizia-ad-essere-abbandonato-i-criteri-di-valutazione-vengono-cambiati-arbitrariamente/ on Mon, 04 Mar 2024 11:00:25 +0000.