Nutri-Rating Does Not Penalize Traditional Food stuff Specialties, Survey Finds

A sur­vey of food items spe­cialty sam­ples con­ducted by the French con­sumer asso­ci­a­tion, UFC-Que Choisir, uncovered Nutri-Rating labels do not penal­ize tra­di­tional prod­ucts with pro­tected sta­tus from the European Union.

The asso­ci­a­tion ana­lyzed 588 meals sam­ples derived from 310 tra­di­tional prod­ucts, lots of of which are cer­ti­fied with Safeguarded Geographical Sign (PGI) or Guarded Designation of Origin (PDO) sta­tus from the E.U.

UFC-Que Choisir wrote in a press launch that at least two-thirds of people sam­ples ​“got superior grades” from Nutri-Score.

See Also:French Draft Invoice to Exclude PDO and PGI Goods From Nutri-Rating

Nutri-Score grades meals dependent on the con­tents these as extra fat, sugar, salt and calo­ries in 100 grams or mil­li­liters of the meals. It then premiums the food stuff with a color/letter code embla­zoned on the pack­ages, from the health­i­est ​“Environmentally friendly A” down to the ​“Red E.”

In the sur­vey, 62 per­cent of the tested food items prod­ucts came out with a Nutri-Rating grade of A, B or C. Usage of such food items ​“is generally encour­aged mainly because of their supe­rior nutri­tional qual­i­ties,” UFC-Que Choisir wrote.

“There are 121 meals prod­ucts clas­si­fied as A and B, with olive oil clas­si­fied as C, which is to be pre­ferred to other forms of unwanted fat,” they added.

In the push launch, UFC-Que Choisir high­lighted a few exam­ples of renowned spe­cial­ties, ​“tra­di­tional food items which exhibit to be very perfectly bal­anced, these kinds of as the Flemish hochepot, the Auvergne hot­pot or the popular Castelnaudary cas­soulet.”

Other exam­ples contain tra­di­tional meat and cold cuts, fruits and legumes, all receiv­ing the A and B rat­ings. In just the Nutri-Rating C clas­si­fi­ca­tion, olive oils are in the com­pany of prod­ucts these kinds of as Alsatian spaet­zle pasta or pars­ley ham from Burgundy.

The rat­ings exhibit that Nutri-Rating does not stig­ma­tize local spe­cial­ties, accord­ing to the asso­ci­a­tion.

In the release, UFC Que-Choisir empha­sized that foods prod­ucts receiv­ing a D or E from Nutri-Rating ​“are not intended to den­i­grate them or pro­hibit their con­sump­tion, but only imply it is rec­om­mended to con­sume them in mod­er­ate amounts and at rea­son­able fre­quen­cies.”

The asso­ci­a­tion included that D or E‑rated prod­ucts might have their position in a bal­anced food plan.

Nutri-Score inven­tor Serge Hercberg advised Olive Oil Moments in a July 2020 inter­view that Nutri-Rating rat­ings are intended to display con­sumers the greatest avail­able option of foods in a given food stuff cat­e­gory.

For exam­ple, Nutri-Score con­sid­ers olive oils the ideal preference in the fats cat­e­gory with its C, attribut­ing a D to other fat this sort of as but­ter.

The asso­ci­a­tion’s sur­vey arrived on the heels of the ongo­ing heated discussion concerning Nutri-Score’s pro­mot­ers and food pro­duc­ers which is inten­si­fy­ing as the European Commission’s self-imposed dead­line of December to select a European-broad front-of-pack label methods.

A short while ago, sev­eral pro­duc­ers’ asso­ci­a­tions of iconic European cheeses, includ­ing the French Roquefort PDO or the Italian Parmigiano Reggiano PDO asso­ci­a­tions have voiced their oppo­si­tion to the Nutri-Score.

They argued the French-born label­ing sys­tem does not con­sider the nutri­tional qual­i­ties of individuals prod­ucts and does not rate the food in quan­ti­ties that will most likely be con­sumed as a daily serv­ing.

Olive oil asso­ci­a­tions and pro­duc­ers in Spain, Italy and Greece have also argued that Nutri-Score’s grade does not accu­rately por­tray the health ben­e­fits of cer­tain grades of olive oil by grad­ing them all with a ​“C.”

Like the cheese pro­duc­ers, olive oil pro­duc­ers have also stressed how the 100 mil­li­liters sam­ple esti­mates are not real­is­tic com­pared to the genuine con­sump­tion.

The oppo­si­tion to Nutri-Score’s pos­si­ble intro­duc­tion in Europe has been grow­ing given that the label­ing sys­tem was adopted by sev­eral coun­tries, includ­ing France and Germany.

Italy, lead­ing the oppo­si­tion to Nutri-Rating, has also pre­sented a com­pet­ing label named Nutrinform Battery, which the European Fee is cur­rently eval­u­at­ing alongside with sev­eral other label­ing sys­tems.

According to UFC-Que Choisir, Nutri-Rating is the best resource avail­able to allow for con­sumers to make a quick and educated decision when buy­ing food items prod­ucts.

For that rea­son, the asso­ci­a­tion has con­firmed that the sur­vey results have been sent to the European Commission. The asso­ci­a­tion con­cluded that it ​“warns meals man­u­fac­tur­ers of their respon­si­bil­ity in a rear­guard struggle to main­tain opac­ity on unbal­anced foods.”