Nutri-Score Gains Traction Despite Opposition From Italian Farmers

As the French food rat­ing sys­tem Nutri-score becomes increas­ingly ubiq­ui­tous in Europe, Italian farm­ers and olive oil pro­duc­ers con­tinue to oppose its imple­men­ta­tion.

The sys­tem, which was devel­oped in 2017 and has since been adopted in seven other European coun­tries, gives food items a grade from A to E, based on their nutri­ent pro­files.

“The goal is to enable con­sumers to com­pare the nutri­tional qual­ity of foods,” Serge Hercberg, a pro­fes­sor of nutri­tion at the University of Paris and head of the team that devised Nutri-score, told Olive Oil Times.

“Nutri-score uses the com­pu­ta­tion of a nutri­ent pro­fil­ing sys­tem tak­ing into account nutri­ent con­tent per 100 grams for food and bev­er­ages,” he added. ​“It allo­cates bad points accord­ing to the con­tent of crit­i­cal con­cern, unfa­vor­able nutri­ents: sugar, sat­u­rated fatty acids and sodium. Good points are allo­cated for the con­tent of fruits, veg­eta­bles and nuts, fibers, pro­teins and olive, rape­seed and nuts oils.”

Nutri-score grades extra vir­gin olive oil with a C, which has drawn crit­i­cism from Coldiretti, the major Italian agri­cul­tural asso­ci­a­tion. However, Hercberg said the rat­ing should not come as a sur­prise.

“[The C for olive oil is] the best score pos­si­ble for added fats and even for veg­etable oils,” he said. ​“The pub­lic health rec­om­men­da­tions do not sug­gest con­sum­ing olive oil with­out lim­its, but they encour­age con­sumers to favor it over other veg­etable oils and espe­cially over ani­mal fats.”

As more coun­tries opt to imple­ment the Nutri-score scheme, pri­vate com­pa­nies have fol­lowed suit.

Food giant Nestlé has said they will adopt Nutri-score on their food pack­ages through­out south­ern Europe.

“With Spain and Portugal, we will now have 7,500 Nestlé prod­ucts fea­tur­ing Nutri-score across the con­ti­nent,” Marco Settembri, Nestlé CEO for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, said. ​“Further stud­ies have con­firmed what we believe: Nutri-score works with con­sumers in Europe and has the poten­tial to become the European Union-wide sys­tem.”

Coldiretti responded that Nestlé’s deci­sion to fur­ther imple­ment Nutri-score on its prod­ucts is ​“untimely and wrong.”

Ettore Prandini, the asso­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent, said the deci­sion ​“seeks to affect the ongo­ing debate in the E.U.” about the even­tual intro­duc­tion of a com­mon food label­ing sys­tem designed to com­bat obe­sity and pro­mote bet­ter eat­ing habits.

“[Nutri-score] is mis­lead­ing, dis­crim­i­na­tory and incom­plete,” he said. ​“Its para­dox is to penal­ize healthy and nat­ural food while favor­ing arti­fi­cial prod­ucts whose true con­tents are in some cases unknown.”

“We risk the pro­mo­tion of junk food with sweet­en­ers instead of sugar in it, while block­ing life-sav­ing food such as the extra vir­gin olive oil, con­sid­ered the sig­na­ture prod­uct of the Mediterranean diet,” he added. ​“Nutritional bal­ance is a result of dif­fer­en­ti­ated daily food intake, cer­tainly not of a spe­cific prod­uct by itself.”

However, Hercberg has heard these argu­ments before and said spe­cial inter­est groups would oppose any type of sys­tem aimed at grad­ing foods based on their nutri­tional con­tent.

“Six years ago, when… I pro­posed the idea of a sum­ma­rized, graded five-col­ors front-of-pack label to inform con­sumers about the nutri­tional qual­ity of foods, we had an imme­di­ate gen­eral out­cry from eco­nomic oper­a­tors,” he said. ​“Almost every­thing was done by pow­er­ful lob­bies to pre­vent the imple­men­ta­tion of this pub­lic health mea­sure.”

Hercberg said that Nutri-score is based on a solid foun­da­tion of sci­en­tific research.

“More than 40 stud­ies pub­lished in inter­na­tional peer-reviewed jour­nals have val­i­dated the algo­rithm under­ly­ing its com­pu­ta­tion,” he said.

The Parisian researcher added that the sys­tem is meant as a com­par­i­son of foods that are in the same cat­e­gory (i.e. for extra vir­gin olive oil and but­ter). He argued it would help con­sumers com­pare sim­i­lar offer­ings – such as two options from dif­fer­ent brands or two types of foods that are pre­pared in sim­i­lar man­ners – to decide what was best for them.

Hercberg is not alone in his advo­cacy for the sys­tem either.

Citing the sup­port that Nutri-score has gath­ered within the World Health Organization since its intro­duc­tion, the Spanish Authority on Food Safety and Nutrition said it will adopt Nutri-score as part of a mul­ti­fac­eted strat­egy to help con­sumers adopt health­ier eat­ing habits.

France also has adopted the sys­tem with enthu­si­asm and may incor­po­rate aspects of it into tax law. A few weeks ago, the Senate advanced a leg­isla­tive pro­posal that, if adopted, would require prod­ucts labelled D or E to pay a spe­cial tax.

In 2019, German author­i­ties also scrapped plans to leg­is­late their own food label­ing sys­tem in favor of imple­ment­ing Nutri-score.

The E.U. itself has hinted that the debate could soon be over.

During the European Parliament’s last meet­ing of the com­mis­sion on envi­ron­ment, pub­lic health and food safety, Alexandra Nikolakopoulou, a mem­ber of the food safety office of the European Commission, said the E.U. must pro­mote a ​“sus­tain­able food sys­tem.”

He added that this would require the adop­tion of the labelling sys­tem with the goal to make its intro­duc­tion manda­tory for the mem­ber states within the next two years.

While the Commission has not yet offi­cially pro­posed such a con­tro­ver­sial mea­sure, the idea was unsur­pris­ingly met with skep­ti­cism in Italy.

“That is absurd,” Prandini told the Italian news­pa­per Il Giornale. ​“The idea is to penal­ize Italy, which along with Japan is one of the coun­tries in the world with the high­est life expectancy, while reward­ing the model of coun­tries where obe­sity is wide­spread.”

Prandini also said the intro­duc­tion of a labelling sys­tem in the United Kingdom meant a loss of at least 30 per­cent for the Italian olive oil mar­ket there.

“Lost in favor of oils that are in no way com­pa­ra­ble to extra vir­gin olive oil,” he said. (Rapeseed oil and wal­nut oil are also graded with a C by Nutri-score, while soya, sun­flower and corn oils are all graded as a D, with but­ter receiv­ing an E.)

Italy has asked its European part­ners sup­port­ing Nutri-score at least not to adopt it for prod­ucts with a Protected Designation of Origin, spe­cial­ties that are an essen­tial part of a high-qual­ity and tra­di­tional diet.

The Italian gov­ern­ment is also work­ing to pro­mote an alter­na­tive label­ing sys­tem it has dubbed, Nutrinform Battery, a ​“bat­tery indi­ca­tor” that alerts the con­sumer about the nutri­tional value of the pack­aged food, focus­ing on calo­ries, fats, sugar and salt for sin­gle serv­ing.

Italian gov­ern­ment offi­cials, includ­ing the Minister of Agriculture, Teresa Bellanova, have also empha­sized that any type of label­ing pro­gram must not be uni­lat­er­ally imposed on mem­ber states.

However, Italian pro­duc­ers and gov­ern­ment offi­cials are already swim­ming against a strong cur­rent. Hercbeg said that Nutri-score has proven to be effec­tive and pop­u­lar in coun­tries where it had already been adopted.

“We have results of sev­eral stud­ies per­formed in real con­di­tions show­ing that the Nutri-score label led to a sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment of the over­all nutri­tional qual­ity of food pur­chases,” Hercberg said.

“On the other hand, a study on accep­tance by con­sumers has shown that 91 per­cent of French peo­ple sup­port the Nutri-score logo present on food pack­ages; 91 per­cent con­sider it easy to under­stand; 70 per­cent have a bet­ter image of the brands dis­play­ing Nutri-score and 87 per­cent believe that Nutri-score should be manda­tory,” he added.

• Coldiretti
• Il Giornale
• Food Navigator