Labelling in the EU is meant to give consumers accurate and honest information on the contents of their food so they can make informed decisions about what they are buying. But due to gaps in EU rules consumers can easily get “lost in a maze” of puzzling claims, according to the European Court of Auditors (ECA).
“Instead of bringing clarity, food labels too often create confusion; there are hundreds of different schemes, logos and claims that people need to decipher,” said Keit Pentus-Rosimannus, an ECA auditor. “Companies can be very creative in what they put on packaging, and EU rules have not caught up with a constantly evolving market, leaving some 450 million European consumers vulnerable to intentionally or unintentionally misleading messages.”
EU rules require producers to list ingredients, allergens and other mandatory information on food packages. Firms can then add voluntary statements including nutrition and health claims – such as “source of Omega-3 fatty acids” or “calcium is necessary to maintain healthy teeth”.
Here the picture gets muddier, according to the 27-nation bloc’s spending watchdog, as current rules allow businesses to zoom in on the more flattering features of their products and gloss over other aspects. An energy bar with lots of sugar can for example be branded simply as “high in protein” and a fatty orange cookie as a “source of fibre”, according to the report.
Even when such claims are false, checks and penalties are weak and almost non-existent for online food sales, it said. Health claims related to plant-substances or “botanicals” are not yet regulated at EU level, which leaves consumers potentially exposed to assertions not supported by science, the auditors added. Similarly, there is no EU definition of what “vegan” and “vegetarian” mean, although private certification schemes exist. Finally, different “front-of-pack nutrition labelling” schemes such as Nutri-Score and Keyhole, which aim at helping shoppers identify healthier food options, are in use in different countries, adding to the confusion, the ECA said.
European consumer rights group Foodwatch is pushing for Nutri-Score, currently used in France, Germany and a handful other countries, to be adopted across the bloc.
The ECA urged the European Commission to take a number of steps including addressing the gaps in the EU legal framework, and strengthening member states’ checks on voluntary labels and online retail.
European consumer rights group Foodwatch is pushing for Nutri-Score, currently used in France, Germany and a handful other countries, to be adopted across the bloc.
Nutri-Score is kinda useless. The score isn’t based on overall healthiness, it’s based on how healthy something is within its group. The group isn’t listed anywhere and its unclear what’s in there. You could find a frozen pizza with a higher rating than hummus or soft drinks being rated the same as bottled water. I don’t even notice the score anymore, I go straight to the ingredients and nutrition table.
EDIT: I did look into it again. Almost all scores are based on the same formula, however, the way it is calculated, it still does not make sense to compare scores across different products. Which is probably why I thought they are separated. Some of the actual problems with the Nutri-Score are as follows:
- The threshold for sugar is way too high. About 90g a day are acceptable.
- You can offset “bad nutrition” with “good nutrition”. My example from above, bottled water having the same score as soft drinks, could be achieved by adding some vitamins or even fiber to offset the sugar. Which is why comparisons between different products don’t make much sense.
- Apparently the score isn’t always based on what’s actually in the product. Stuff like cocoa powder is rated based on how you’d consume it, e.g. dissolved in a glass of milk. You can improve your score simply by reducing the amount of powder recommended per glass. I don’t know what the limit of this is, like improving your frozen pizza’s score by recommending serving it with salad.
All the information is taken from the German Wikipedia.
I think your post could be misleading. Iirc there are three categories, drinks, food and milk-stuff. So you can absolutely compare frozen pizza with hummus, and maybe the frozen pizza has more protein and the hummus more fat.
The algorithm is on Wikipedia
Ps: I might also be wrong, but this is how I remember :)
This is straight up misinformation. 95 percent of all foods are in the same category. Only fats, drinks and cheese have slightly different rules. Please edit your comment to stop the spread of misinformation.
Done! Apparently I’ve fallen for a common misconception. My point however still stands, the score is mostly useless, just my reasoning got changed.
Thank you for the edit. The NutriScore’s goal is to compare similar products from different brands, it was never intended to compare different products. The idea is that consumers that are not well informed and don’t read the labels would rather grab the cereals with B instead of the cereals with C next to them. This puts pressure on the producers to change their formulas. There are definitely still loopholes for “healthy-washing” but the rules can be and have already been changed.
Edit: Added vitamins do NOT improve the NutriScore btw but your point stands for fiber.
You don’t need the nutriscore to compare humus to frozen pizza and I don’t think anyone is using it for that.
On the other hand it’s quite helpful to pick which pizza to buy. If one pizza is a F and another one is a B I’ll tend to go for the B. Especially if I’m shopping with kids I don’t have the time to check the label of each pizza box.
Another beneficial aspect of the nutriscore is that brands are now trying to have a good nutriscore, so now we are seeing a lot more processed food with whole wheat and lower level of sugar.
So as a whole I really think the nutriscore improved the nutritional value of what French people are eating.
I do actually agree that Nutri-Score could incentivize companies to add better ingredient to their food. However, the high tolerance for sugar is a clear-cut sign for lobbying influencing the calculation, I’d presume. And of course, until you have to feature a Nutri-Score on your products, you could simply not include it instead of improving your products - which leads back to the original article.
But that aside, my main critique is that a score like this should be usable to compare different products. While an informed customer certainly does benefit from distinguishing an “A” from a “D” frozen pizza at first glance, just as many people may eat more frozen pizzas as a result of rating it “A” instead of going for inherently healthier choices simply due to their lower rating. After all, many people still think juice is inherently healthy despite it being the poster child for hidden sugar bombs.
The nutriscore is juices is a C at best, so in this case it shows that juices are not as healthy as people thought.
It seems very similar to the “health star” system we have here…it is next to useless.
Situation:
Say I want to pick up a snack, do I go for a small bag of potato chips or a yogurt? Which is healthier?
Who the fuck knows, you can’t compare two snack foods, that is a logical and reasonable idea, and we can’t have that.But it can also be deceptive, because the yogurt may have 2 stars and the chips have 4 stars, because they are only rated against their own categories.
There should be a simple system. Where everything is compared to a “standard”; like steamed broccoli, with no sauce.
Do EU goods have a nutrition label similar to the US? Pretty easy to look at the ingredients here as well as percentages of things like protein, fiber, fat, and added sugars.
They do. But one thing that bugs me about the nutrition labels in the US is that they show “amount per serving”, rather than per 100ml or per 100g, which they have in the EU (at least in Sweden). it makes it a step harder to compare nutrition labels in the US.
I also feel judged when they tell me a bag of chips contains many servings.
Yeah. Tic-tacs are all sugar, but due to the serving size being so small they can claim they are sugar free
You telling me a packet of ramen isn’t really 2 servings?
It’s better than nothing.
It’s better than it was before - each iteration is better.This is how the system works.
You can’t get it prefect from scratch, it has to evolve like this, and customers too.It’s how we advance. Food is important.
This is how I shop for food, and how I dropped 110 lbs 15 years ago:
1/ Look at the food:
- If you recognize a fruit, veggie or egg, it’s unprocessed.
- If you recognize a basic foodstuff like bread, butter, it’s semi-processed.
- If you don’t recognize the food, it’s ultra-processed.
2/ Only buy unprocessed or semi-processed food. The more processed, the less you should buy it. If it’s unprocessed, favor green veggies over tubers and nuts, and avoid fruits with too much sugar. If it’s semi-processed, stay away from stuff that has fat or refined sugar in it as much as possible.
3/ Always read the calories label. Only one metric matters: kcal / 100g. Forget “per serving” and other deceitful metrics. If it’s under 180 kcal / 100g, it’s okay. If it’s under 250 kcal / 100g, start looking for alternatives: the other brand right next to it on the shelf might have massively fewer or more calories for the same products for no discernable reason - a good rule of thumb is: store brands often have fewer calories than brand names. If it’s over 250 kcal / 100g, avoid, with one exception: if it’s a powerful condiment that requires very little to flavor food, like mustard, it’s okay.
4/ Ban refined sugar - incl. juices - fat in all its forms (butter, oil…) and limit meat to once a week (a Sunday treat for example).
Bullshit. All the information you could ever need is on the packaging already.
edit: if you disagree with me, please enlighten us what you think should be added? We have a complete list of ingredients sorted by amount contained, a detailed breakdown of nutrients from carbohydrates to fiber to sodium content, as well as a declaration of origin…I really don’t see what’s wrong. If you care about the quality of the product and/or your health, just read the information provided. It’s all there.
Of course the consumer must not be so gullible to look only at the shiny claims on the front. If you don’t want to get confused by “puzzling claims” just IGNORE them altogether and assume they’re on the packaging to entice or even mislead you into buying the product. If it says “made with natural ingredients” you know that it’s mostly artificial ingredients. Otherwise it would say “made from all natural ingredients”.
If you think about fair trade and rainforest alliance, there are many “green” labels and fair worker wage/ no slavery labels. Most of them are owned by a brand and not transparent.
We could use some clarification there.
Perhaps. But unlike nutritional facts, the fair treatment of workers/farmers, the sustainability of the company’s product sourcing, or the ethical treatment of animals are extremely difficult to monitor and evaluate. All too often, even respected labels do not represent the truth.
I remember a TV report about ethically sourced cobblestones a few years ago. Reporters showed through painstaking research in the source country that the stones had in fact been hewn by children working in a dusty quarry without any form of protective equipment…
The only way around this is probably to buy local whenever possible, and that is something which is truthfully indicated on the package.
For those who want to learn more about the Nutri-Score
https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/IARC_Evidence_Summary_Brief_2.pdf
Publication bias and Nutri-Score: A complete literature review of the substantiation of the effectiveness of the front-of-pack logo Nutri-Score
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213434424000069
Report: Why the European Commission must choose the Nutri-Score nutrition label
Yeah nutri score is the solution lol :)
