Nutri-Score is not enough to tell if you are eating healthy or not. It says nothing about how well the food was processed. Fortunately, there is also such a thing as a Nova rating.
You are probably familiar with the Nutri grades, which divide food into five groups, from A to E. To determine which group a product belongs to, the amount of sugar, salt, saturated fat, vegetable ingredients, fiber and protein per product is taken into account.100g of the product. In equal amounts, a food product with Nutri-Score A is far more nutritious than one labeled E. But make no mistake: Nutrients by themselves are not enough to determine if what you’re eating is actually healthy.
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You are probably familiar with the Nutri grades, which divide food into five groups, from A to E. To determine which group a product belongs to, the amount of sugar, salt, saturated fat, vegetable ingredients, fiber and protein per product is taken into account.100g of the product. In equal amounts, a food product with Nutri-Score A is far more nutritious than one labeled E. But make no mistake: Nutrients by themselves are not enough to determine if what you’re eating is actually healthy. This rating does not take into account the amount of the product you are actually taking. Olive oil, for example, does not do well because it is very greasy, but who uses 100 grams of it in one go? Furthermore, Nutri-Score ignores any additives the product contains as well as the processing it underwent to obtain the final product. As a result, some industrial food products, such as packaged white bread, ready meals, and diet sodas, have an excellent degree of nutrients, when in fact they are ultra-processed foods based on industrial techniques – hydrogenation or solidification, hydrolysis… . – It has been used which often contains various preservatives, thickeners, colorants, stabilizers, etc. And that’s while more and more scientific research is showing that excessive consumption of ultra-processed foods can be harmful to your health: increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, inflammatory reactions, and altered intestinal flora. “To include this aspect in the assessment, Brazilian food scientists invented the Nova classification, which is now recognized by both the World Health Organization and the United Nations,” says Serge Peters, Professor of Nutrition at Haute-école Léonard de Vinci (Brussels). ). Nova classification divides food into four groups, depending on the degree of its industrial processing. However, you will rarely find a reference to the Nova rating on the label. Fortunately, there is the free app Open Food Facts, with which you can scan products directly in the store. “However, Nova’s rating isn’t perfect either. So it’s best to use it carefully,” Peters adds. “The rating has quite a few nuances: some products end up in Category 4, whereas if you read the label on it, it’s clear that it’s not overly problematic in the end.” Of course there are also products that have undergone very little processing, but they should not be eaten too much! A reasonable approach is to combine the best of both worlds, Nutri-Score and Nova rating complement each other well. So choose products that score well in both systems.
