Nutri-Score
What is the problem?
Seeing at a glance how balanced the fruit yoghurt or crunchy muesli is? Not possible in the supermarket. This is because the nutritional value declarations with relevant information on sugar, fat or salt are usually hidden in the small print on the back of the packaging and difficult to interpret for non-experts. This contributes to the fact that many people eat unhealthy food - and more than half of all adults and about one in five schoolchildren in the EU are overweight or even obese.
What is the solution?
Scientific studies prove: Nutrition labels on the front of the package highlighted in traffic light colours are the most understandable. They can help people shop more healthily. Doctors' associations, health insurance companies and consumer organisations have for some time already been calling for food traffic lights. However, the introduction of an obligatory traffic light system throughout Europe failed in 2010 due to massive resistance from the food industry. In 2017, the Nutri-Score was developed in France and has been on the advance in Europe. There are now a total of seven EU countries, including France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Switzerland, encouraging food businesses to adopt Nutri-Score as a Front-of-Pack Nutrition Labeling (FOPNL) on a voluntary basis.
What is foodwatch doing?
In the supermarket, consumers must be able to see at a glance how balanced a product is. The Nutri-Score is the most comprehensible model of nutritional labelling that exists at the moment and it is gaining increasing support throughout Europe. All countries where foodwatch is represented have adopted the Nutri-Score after years of campaigning for its introduction.
For Nutri-Score to be fully effective, voluntary labelling is not enough. foodwatch is therefore calling for EU-wide mandatory front-of-pack labelling of food with Nutri-Score!
More information in our factsheets: