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0 pointssjamaan4mo ago0 comments

> - Force better labeling, like the Nutri-Score in France and EU

NutriScore is mostly useless, to the point of being misleading. The system was cooked up by the industry, which explains a lot.

It is a label that tells you how nutritious a given product is "compared to products in the same category". So you could have, say, candy or frozen pizza with a NutriScore A and that would be just fine according to this system because it happens to be more nutritious than other candy/pizza. In other words, a product having a NutriScore of A doesn't mean the product is actually healthy or good for you.

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melvinmelih4mo ago

I’m in Colombia right now and they actually have a great food labeling system. It just warns you if a product contains too much sugar, salt, additives etc, without trying to score. Whereas the European labels give you a false sense that everything is nutritious.

rendx4mo ago

Who or what defines what is "too much" of any ingredient? Isn't that a scoring system too?

European NutriScore "assigns products a rating letter from A (best) to E (worst), with associated colors from green to red. High content of fruits and vegetables, fibers, protein and healthy oils (rapeseed, walnut and olive oils) per 100 g of food product promote a preferable score, while high content of energy, sugar, saturated fatty acids, and sodium per 100 g promote a detrimental score." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutri-Score

carlosjobim4mo ago

> Who or what defines what is "too much" of any ingredient?

Nutritionists.

Labels on processed food products go in the style of "Contains an excess of sodium", "Contains an excess of sugar", and so on.

Bishonen884mo ago

So is it useless or useful? You write one but then describe the other (compared to other products in the same category seems value add for sure)

pbhjpbhj4mo ago

That sounds useful. Consumers most likely choose the food they want to eat by type, being able to spot the healthier options within a category sounds like it would help me in the supermarket.

We have a traffic light system, pretty useful. But when all items in a category are bad for you, and you know it, them all having red lights doesn't help much.

I'd certainly try alternatives that are marginally healthier, if that's true generally then it puts some pressure on food industry to move to healthier choices.

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