`Nestlé to Drop Nutri-Score Labels in Switzerland - Olive Oil Times
Enter keywords and hit Go →
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी

Nestlé to Drop Nutri-Score Labels in Switzerland

By Daniel Dawson
May. 27, 2025 11:29 UTC
Summary Summary

Nestlé will grad­u­ally stop using the Nutri-Score label­ing sys­tem on cer­tain brands in Switzerland this sum­mer, after being one of the first major com­pa­nies to adopt it in 2019. The deci­sion fol­lows a trend of decreased sup­port for Nutri-Score in Switzerland and other European coun­tries, with some com­pa­nies and super­mar­kets drop­ping the label due to lim­ited ben­e­fits and imple­men­ta­tion costs.

Nestlé said it will ​“grad­u­ally” aban­don the Nutri-Score front-of-pack label­ing sys­tem on some of its brands in Switzerland this sum­mer.

After becom­ing one of the first major com­pa­nies to adopt Nutri-Score in 2019, the Swiss multi­na­tional food and bev­er­age pro­ducer is drop­ping the traf­fic-light style nutri­tional label on some con­fec­tionery and drink brands.

A Nestlé spokesper­son said the com­pany was remov­ing Nutri-Score from prod­ucts whose direct com­peti­tors were not using the label.

See Also:France Adopts Nutri-Score Labels

“Support for this nutri­tional labelling has sig­nif­i­cantly decreased in the coun­try, and today Nestlé’s local Swiss brands are often the only ones car­ry­ing Nutri-Score in the prod­uct cat­e­gories they are present in,” a spokesper­son told Just Food.

Instead, the com­pany will print a QR code on the food pack­ag­ing labels to pro­vide addi­tional infor­ma­tion about ingre­di­ents and nutri­tional val­ues.

Nutri-Score

Nutri-Score is a five-color-let­ter food rat­ing sys­tem, with scores rang­ing from the Green‑A down to the Red‑E. The FOPL is designed to help con­sumers make health­ier choices in the super­mar­ket. The algo­rithm deter­mines a food item’s score based on the macronu­tri­ent con­tent per 100 grams or mil­li­liters.

The announce­ment comes one month after Swiss super­mar­ket chain Migros aban­doned Nutri-Score, cit­ing lim­ited cus­tomer ben­e­fits despite the high imple­men­ta­tion costs.

Previously, rival food man­u­fac­turer Danone announced it would drop Nutri-Score labels on many of its prod­ucts after a change to the algo­rithm, which resulted in lower scores for sev­eral of its prod­ucts.

Running counter to the trend, French super­mar­ket chain Carrefour would require Nutri-Score labels from its sup­pli­ers and cal­cu­late its rat­ings for brands that do not com­ply. 

The deci­sions of the super­mar­ket chain and food man­u­fac­tur­ers high­light a col­lec­tive action prob­lem fac­ing Nutri-Score, exem­pli­fied by Nestlé’s state­ment that it still sup­ported the label­ing sys­tem and would leave it in place on some prod­ucts in the Swiss mar­ket and other mar­kets.

“This deci­sion is spe­cific to the Swiss mar­ket and does not affect Nestlé’s sup­port for Nutri-Score in other European coun­tries,” the spokesper­son said. ​“Nestlé con­tin­ues to sup­port and imple­ment Nutri-Score in other European coun­tries where gov­ern­ments are favor­able to this nutri­tional labelling.”

“The low adop­tion of Nutri-Score in Switzerland, com­bined with decreased polit­i­cal sup­port, cre­ates a sit­u­a­tion where Nutri-Score can no longer effec­tively ful­fil its pri­mary role of enabling con­sumers to com­pare the nutri­tional value of prod­ucts within the same cat­e­gory,” the spokesper­son added.

Nutri-Score is applied vol­un­tar­ily in nine European Union coun­tries and Switzerland, but is widely opposed in seven other EU states.

The European Union pro­hibits mem­ber coun­tries from uni­lat­er­ally imple­ment­ing a food label­ing sys­tem. Instead, Nutri-Score had been widely rumored to be the front-run­ner for a European-wide food label until the com­mis­sion announced it would delay its plans to adopt a sin­gle food label­ing sys­tem in 2023.

Priorities have since changed in Brussels after the European elec­tion in 2024, with some de-empha­sis on food label­ing from the com­mis­sion.

The loss of momen­tum comes despite sup­port from sci­en­tists and pub­lic health groups who argue that Nutri-Score has ​“demon­strated its effec­tive­ness.” However, other researchers ques­tion the reli­a­bil­ity of some stud­ies that have led to this con­clu­sion.

While the Spanish gov­ern­ment has rec­om­mended the use of Nutri-Score, the food label­ing sys­tem is vocif­er­ously opposed in Italy and Greece. 

The coun­tries’ agri­cul­tural asso­ci­a­tions are con­cerned about the lower scores for tra­di­tional food prod­ucts, includ­ing the ​‘Light-green B’ for all grades of olive oil.

Olive oil pro­duc­ers argue that extra vir­gin olive oil should receive a ​‘Green A,’ the high­est score, due to its polyphe­nol con­tent, which is not cur­rently con­sid­ered by the Nutri-Score algo­rithm. 

However, Nutri-Score cre­ator Serge Herberg told Olive Oil Times in a 2023 inter­view that olive oil could never receive a ​‘Green A’ because of its fat con­tent.

“I won­der, is it the eco­nomic sec­tor that decides how to clas­sify a prod­uct, or is it the sci­en­tists?” he ques­tioned.

More articles on:  ,

Advertisement
Advertisement

Related Articles