alt Hacker News> - 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.
Replies
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)
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.
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.