Nutrition labeling is a tool that aims to help citizens choose foods that are beneficial to their health. Thus, institutions are currently promoting and developing various systems to ensure consumers’ right to information.
Health and its care are, therefore, one of the European Union’s main priorities for the coming years, as indicated in the Farm to Fork Strategy, and it is expected that in the autumn of this year, a system of frontal nutritional labeling will be adopted that will cover the entire Community territory. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has already published scientific recommendations that the European Commission will take into account when defining its proposal. In making its evaluation, EFSA has asked three main questions: “Is the food or component well defined and characterized? Is the claimed effect beneficial to human health? Has a cause-effect relationship been scientifically demonstrated?
Among labeling, Nutri-Score is the most popular front-end labeling; however, it is only one among many existing food rating systems. This labeling was created by France in 2017 and has since been put into use in as many as six other European countries – Belgium, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Nutri-score is unique in its simplicity: it is a model based on a letter and color code, from A to E and from green to red. It aims to display a particular food or beverage’s nutritional value to the consumer easily and visually. If a food has a low nutritional value, it will be marked with an E in red, while if it is high, we will find an A in green.
Due to the difficulties in defining a robust model that is flexible enough to adapt to European diets, ongoing research is underway on improving the Nutri-Score system. A scientific committee composed of different experts was created at the beginning of 2021 and is evaluating the current algorithm.
The committee’s first recommendations were published on August 3, 2022, and include: the search for a better differentiation of foods according to their salt or sugar content and the stricter assignment of sweet products to be classified as C instead of A. The final publication, including the revision of the beverage algorithm, is expected at the end of the year.
On the other hand, some countries opposed to Nutriscore, such as Italy, have already made decisions on the matter. Thus, the Italian Competition Authority has banned the use of this algorithm on Italian products with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) or European Union Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). This country has designed its own system called Nutrinform, which, instead of labeling foods as healthy or harmful, shows the energy contribution of the products and their nutritional values through a battery graph.
In Spain, there are also different positions with respect to labeling systems. Initially, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs was in favor of the Nutri-Score system; however, the Ministry of Agriculture and various sectors were critical, considering that this system could “guide consumers to consumption patterns far removed from the Mediterranean diet.” This reservation is also shared by some political forces such as the Popular Party, which through its representation in the European Parliament, has requested for the European Food Safety Authority to determine its own system in all EU countries through a parliamentary question to the European Commission last August.
As can be seen, although the European Commission will have to decide in the short term, this issue is the subject of much debate in the national and EU public ecosystems. In the coming months, the latest developments will be announced, and, in Spain’s case, the current system may be modified, which would directly impact the food and beverage industry.