News 03.08.2020

How the food lobby is trying to water down the Nutri-Score Label

  • Traffic light labels
  • Sugar, fat & salt
  • Transparency and food safety

The Nutri-Score label is under attack: Germany’s food lobby wants to change the traffic-light label so that unhealthy products appear healthier – with these changes, even several sugary beverages would get a green light for “good nutritional quality”.

Food companies are lobbying feverishly to change the basis for calculating the Nutri-Score. Numerous unscientific demands have been made, above all by the Food Federation Germany, the leading association of the German food industry.

These demands were revealed in a set of internal documents that foodwatch obtained from the Max Rubner-Institut – Federal Research Institute of Nutrition and Food (MRI), whose research work focuses on consumer health protection in the nutrition sector.

Initially, the food lobby sought to prevent the introduction of the Nutri-Score; now it hopes to make the labelling scheme as harmless as possible for manufacturers. We can’t allow the lobby associations to succeed with this plan!
Luise Molling foodwatch campaigner

These are the food lobby’s 7 most audacious demands

03-08-2020
The food lobby is working feverishly to water down the thresholds for calculating the Nutri-Score so that unhealthy products will look healthier to shoppers. One good example is fruit juice: as sugary drinks are one of the main causes of obesity, the current Nutri-Score label calculates the sugar content of beverages more strictly than that of solid food products. If the lobby gets its way, grape juice would be given a green A instead of a red E – in spite of the fact that it contains 60 per cent more sugar than Coca-Cola!
The Nutri-Score label currently gives orange juice a yellow C because, in spite of its high content of fruit and the associated beneficial nutrients, it also contains huge amounts of sugar (88 grams per litre). If it were up to the industry, orange juice would nevertheless be given a dark green A. The only beverage that has earned this rating to date is water.
The Food Federation is demanding that meat and sausage products be given more favourable scores in spite of the fact that Germans consume roughly twice as much meat as is recommended by the German Nutrition Society (DGE). The result: high-fat/high-salt salami would receive a better score …
… as would these pork neck steaks.
The food industry wants permission to use other labelling schemes in addition to the Nutri-Score label. The result would be a label jungle in the supermarket. If differing models were used, it would no longer be possible for the Nutri-Score label to fulfil its main function – to make it easy for shoppers to compare products at a glance.
If the demands of the food industry were met, dairy drinks would be given a much better rating. Subsequently, products like Starbuck’s high-sugar coffee could be sold with a light-green B rating instead of a dark-red E.
Censorship instead of transparency: if the food industry gets its way, apps that share the Nutri-Scores of products, such as Open Food Facts, would be banned and it would no longer be legal for NGOs or journalists to calculate example Nutri-Scores for individual products.
The Food Federation is demanding that the Nutri-Score for certain food groups be calculated on the basis of smaller portion sizes instead of using 100 grams or 100 millilitres as a uniform reference amount. As a result, the Nutri-Score for the high-fat, high-sugar spread Nutella would be improved from red to yellow, which is what happened when the British traffic-light label was changed in a similar manner by the industry. This deceptive trick works well with bread spreads because the specified portion size is particularly small (15g).

By filing a request under the German Freedom of Information Act, foodwatch was able to obtain documents from the Max-Rubner-Institut that reveal the absurd and largely unscientific demands with which the industry lobby is trying to water down the thresholds applied to computing the Nutri-Score. The German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture had tasked the research institute with evaluating the lobby’s demands but had yet to publish the related documents.

No labelling system is perfect, and even the Nutri-Score has room for improvement. However, the lobby association’s absurd demands, which would make even sausage and sugary beverages look healthier, are not a helpful contribution to this debate.
Luise Molling foodwatch campaigner

The algorithms used for calculating the Nutri-Score are due to be evaluated at European level in the coming year – the Food Federation of Germany submitted its demands in this context. foodwatch is calling on decision-makers to ensure that the Nutri-Score algorithm will be further developed solely on the basis of independent scientific assessments and not the wishes of the food industry.

In a few months the Nutri-Score model will be introduced by manufacturers on a voluntary basis in Germany. It is intended for use as a front-of-pack nutrition label for processed foods. The European Commission is planning to propose a mandatory European nutrition label for food products in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Sources and further information: