The research, published in the European Journal of Public Health, tested how Portuguese consumers reacted to both labeling systems.

Serge Hercberg, the inventor of Nutri-Score, and other prominent scientists involved in the development of the French FOPL co-authored the study.

Their findings suggest that Nutri-Score is more effective in helping consumers understand the nutritional value of food and make healthier purchasing decisions.

The study involved 1,014 adults in Portugal and compared the two FOPLs across various food categories, including breakfast products, breakfast cereals and added fats.

“Nutri-Score appeared to be a more appreciated and effective tool than Nutrinform Battery for helping Portuguese consumers to choose foods with a better nutritional composition,” the authors wrote.

Participants using Nutri-Score were significantly more successful in identifying more nutritional products.

In a task involving three breakfast-related products, those using Nutri-Score were 28 times more likely to correctly identify the healthiest options compared to those using Nutrinform Battery.

In the “added fats” category, participants in the Nutri-Score group were 17 times more successful in choosing the healthiest fat.

Overall, participants exposed to Nutri-Score were more likely to choose healthier products across all tested food categories.

Regarding olive oil specifically, 83 percent of participants in the Nutri-Score group said they would purchase olive oil more often, compared to 66 percent in the Nutrinform Battery group.

Nutri-Score is a traffic-light-style FOPL that uses five coordinated colors and letters to rate the healthfulness of packaged food based on its fat, sugar, salt, and calorie content per 100 grams or milliliters. A “Green A” indicates the healthiest option, while a “Red E” denotes the least healthy.

Nutrinform Battery is a non-directive system that displays numerical information based on recommended portion sizes.

Using battery-shaped icons, it shows the percentage of daily reference intakes for energy, fats, saturated fats, sugars, and salt. It does not rank or color-code foods, requiring consumers to interpret the data themselves.

According to the researchers, 71 percent of Portuguese participants preferred Nutri-Score over Nutrinform Battery.

“Even among those who had initially used Nutrinform Battery, 59 percent switched their preference when shown both labels side by side,” the authors wrote.

Last year, Portugal adopted the Nutri-Score as an optional labeling system for food producers who wish to display it on their packaging.

The new findings are consistent with a 2023 study conducted on Spanish consumers and published in the same journal. Several of the authors, including Hercberg, were involved in both studies.

That earlier research found that Nutri-Score was more effective than Nutrinform Battery in enabling Spanish consumers to rank products according to nutritional quality accurately.

The authors argued that Nutrinform Battery requires “a higher cognitive workload,” which may explain why consumers preferred Nutri-Score.

According to the authors, the battery icon may be counterintuitive because it visually contradicts how people typically interpret battery symbols in everyday life.

In most digital contexts, a fully charged or highly charged battery is associated with something positive, such as full power or readiness.

However, in the Nutrinform system, a less charged battery represents a healthier food choice because it means the product contributes less to the daily intake of fat, sugar, salt or calories.

“By analogy with the electronic devices used daily by many people, graphic representations of charged batteries are more likely to be interpreted as a positive signal or a desirable state to be attained,” the authors wrote.

The research comes as Romania recently joined the list of European countries allowing voluntary adoption of Nutri-Score.

In recent years, both labeling systems have been considered by the European Commission as potential models for a unified E.U.-wide food labeling scheme.

However, a heated debate and deep divisions among member states contributed to the previous European Commission’s failure to advance the initiative. So far, the new commission has not indicated that it will move forward with a bloc-wide labeling system.

Nutri-Score’s advocates see the publication of these studies, which act as an official update to the scientific position of the European Commission, as an implicit endorsement of the FOPL.

The European Commission remains on pace to name a single mandatory FOPL for the E.U. in the next six months, with Nutri-Score firmly in place as the front runner.

The JRC studies indicated that FOPLs incentivize the food industry to enhance the nutritional quality of their products to improve the products’ scores.

According to the studies, consumers prefer simple, colorful and evaluative FOPLs. In addition, consumers understand less complex labels more easily than more complicated, monochrome and non-evaluative labels.

Other findings show how FOPLs more efficiently inform consumers compared to menu labels, shelf labels, point-of-sale signs, QR codes, website hyperlinks and other external tools that offer access to information.

The JRC studies also highlighted how deeply consumers are influenced by the country of origin of a product. However, when buying groceries, time pressure or the attractiveness of specific products due to advertising or packaging often distracts consumers from investigating the product’s origin.

Consumers also favor products that advertise their low environmental impacts.

“The JRC position seems to specifically counter all major criticism that has been raised against Nutri-Score in the last two years,” Cristina Chirico, the director of the Agriculture is Life Association in Italy and head of the international office of the Confederation of Italian Farmers, told Olive Oil Times.

Nutri-Score is a traffic-light-style FOPL that uses a combination of five coordinated colors and letters to rate how healthy a packaged food item is based on its fat, sugar, salt and calorie content per 100 gram or milliliter serving. The “Green A” indicates the healthiest option, and “Red E” denotes the least healthy.

According to its promoters, Nutri-Score allows consumers to compare food within the same product category.

Most grades of olive oil, including extra virgin olive oil, receive a “Light-green B” from Nutri-Score, the second highest rating. Olive oils previously received a “Yellow C,” but heavy lobbying from across the olive oil world resulted in a tweak in the algorithm to consider the type of fat content. Olive oil is approximately 76 percent monounsaturated fat.

In a presentation of the study results, the JRC said the new findings would help inform the European Commission’s decision on which FOPL will be selected for mandatory adoption across the E.U.

In response to the study, Serge Hercberg, Nutri-Score’s creator, said the FOPL perfectly adhered to all of the JRC’s findings.

“Conversely, the Italian Nutrinform Battery FOPL is classified as a monochrome, non-evaluative and complex front-of-pack nutritional labeling (corresponding to labels less well positioned by JRC in terms of usefulness and efficiency),” he added.

According to Hercberg, the findings from the JRC studies further refute the allegations made by lobbyist groups and agricultural associations that argue Nutri-Score is overly simplistic and hurts traditional producers.

The most intense criticisms of Nutri-Score have come from Italy, where the government, farming associations and academics have rebuked the FOPL. The JRC findings also have been met with widespread criticism.

“Italy has been working as a whole to ditch a labeling system which is believed to be misleading consumers,” Chirico said. “That position does not change. So we will press on with our challenge.”

“We are worried by the timing and the contents of the JRC update and by some criticism to the Italian position, which is not the effect of lobbying; it is a fight for the health and the interests of European consumers and farmers,” she added.

Chirico said associations and stakeholders in Italy would continue to push back against Nutri-Score, which they believe to be a simplistic food rating system.

“Unhealthy eating is the byproduct of abandoning traditional farming models,” she added. “Sustainable farming production is inherently linked to healthy and sustainable consumption.”

Like many others in Italy, she believes authorities must take a more holistic approach to food labeling, citing the pillars of the Mediterranean diet as an example.

“The goal we are all working for is to raise consumers’ awareness about the nutritional qualities of food,” Chirico said. “The difference here is that we consider the effects of a whole diet. We believe an individual’s lifestyle determines their health, not just a single product.”

However, Hercberg said that this type of rhetoric (referring to the general arguments and not the specific one listed above) is made by food lobbies in Italy to defend their economic interests and “flatter culinary nationalism.”

“These pseudo-arguments are, of course, absurd, but they are in line with those conveyed by various political parties in Italy, notably the extreme right and populist parties for electoral reasons,” he added.

Chirico counters that improving healthy eating habits require sustainable agriculture, alleviating food poverty and improving nutrition education, which she maintains that a single food label cannot achieve.

“We cannot accept conditioning the consumer with labels which simply ignore the broader picture of the food system,” she said.

According to European Commission sources, the final decision on whether Nutri-Score will be selected as Europe’s mandatory food label would likely be made public in the first three months of 2023, under the Swedish presidency of the E.U.

• European Commission Joint Research Center

Italian officials once again criticized Nutri-Score as an overly simplistic way to evaluate food nutrition.

They again argued that the French-born FOPL only takes macronutrient contents into account and ignores micronutrients – such as vitamins, minerals and polyphenols – which are responsible for some foods’ considerable health benefits.

The officials further accused Nutri-Score of misleading consumers and directly attacking the Mediterranean diet. Instead, the officials lobbied to adopt Nutrinform Battery, the Italian alternative that has also been widely criticized by its detractors.

The two platforms are competing to become the E.U.-wide standard for food labels, with the European Commission set to determine by the end of the year.

“Italy is against food package labeling founded on traffic-light systems, such as Nutri-Score, which arise from a simplistic approach to nutrition without clear scientific evidence,” Luigi Di Maio, the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, told an audience of Italian scientists, farmers associations, food producers associations and national and European politicians.

“For instance, these systems’ algorithms could attribute to natural foods such as milk worst ratings than those given to sugar-free carbonated sodas,” he added.

The event, organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the food producers association Federalimentare, was supported by the major food and farming associations and several health groups devoted to the fight against obesity.

Michele O. Carruba, professor and president of the Center for Research on Obesity at the University of Milan, said that FOPLs, such as Nutri-Score, are not the answer to the obesity epidemic.

Carruba has examined 50 years’ worth of data regarding obesity worldwide. He said the chronic illness has complex social and nutritional causes.

Carruba believes that categorizing foods as “good” or “bad” does not adequately address the underlying causes of obesity. Instead, he believes concepts such as the Mediterranean diet are better suited to combating obesity.

“[The Mediterranean diet pyramid shows] there are no bad or good foods, but only bad or good diets,” he said. “The pyramid not only tells us how often we should eat specific kind of foods, but it also cites the suggested servings, the quantities which allow a balanced diet.”

According to Carruba, one of Nutri-Score’s most significant shortcomings is that it does not consider the portion sizes. Instead, Nutri-Score ratings are determined by the content of fats, sugars, sodium and calories per 100 grams or milliliters of a food item.

Carruba said that such standard quantities do not reflect the actual consumption and therefore cannot rate foods efficiently.

“None of us would use 100 grams of olive oil since the common serving ranges between 15 or 30 grams,” he said. “Still, olive oil is rated on a 100 grams basis.”

Carruba also believes Nutri-Score focuses more on the unfavorable contents of food than on its healthy qualities.

“Its algorithm attributes up to 40 negative points for contents with unfavorable effects and only 15 points at the most for the favorable part,” he said.

Nutri-Score, whose color-letter labels range from the healthy “Green A” down to the “Red E,” rates food as good or bad, said Carruba, “whereas the effect of food depends on the quantity and the frequency with which it is consumed.”

The Italian scientist emphasized the relevance of proper nutrition and told delegates that Nutri-Score is “merely interpretative and non-educational, non-informative system, as it does not improve the consumer’s knowledge or nutritional information.”

“Furthermore, it does not provide any assistance in deciding the overall diet composition, nor does it facilitate in any way the appropriate combination of various foods,” he added.

Vincenzo Salvatore, a professor of European law at the University of Insubria in Varese, said E.U. regulations describe two different kinds of food supplementary information that may be given to the consumer.

The first is additional information about the food itself. The second is the health claims, which suggest a correlation between a particular food and health.

“Health claims come from an estimate about the favorable or unfavorable effects of a given food,” Salvatore said. “Any such assessment means that the consumers are being prompted with a given behavior.”

According to Salvatore, Nutrinform Battery focuses on the information about food and the relevance of a single serving to an overall daily diet with its graphic scheme.

On the other hand, “Nutri-Score is a health claim system which does not seem to be able to educate the consumers about a healthy diet,” Salvatore said. “Instead, it prompts the consumer to buy a given product or discard another product based on an appreciation of its impact on health.”

“One thing is to educate the consumer showing that if you buy a chocolate bar and eat a piece of that you will eat 30 grams of sugar, a different thing is to put on that bar a red traffic-light label saying that you should not buy it at all,” he added.

Nutri-Score creator Serge Hercberg, a professor of nutrition at the Université Sorbonne Paris-Nord, told Olive Oil Times that the latest Italian criticisms directed toward the French-born front-of-pack labeling system do not stand.

“Nutri-Score has never been presented as a measure that in itself might be the answer to the obesity epidemic,” he said. “Instead, it can play a role among the measures implemented by a public health nutritional policy.”

“It is not a magic bullet, but as it has been demonstrated by several scientific studies published in peer-reviewed journals, Nutri-Score could potentially contribute to reducing obesity, chronic disease and mortality,” he added.

Herberg emphasized his support for the Mediterranean diet, which he said: “has been the basis of the French nutritional recommendations for many years.” Hercberg also reiterated how Nutri-Score is “totally consistent with MedDiet.”

“The MedDiet is characterized by abundant consumption of fruit, vegetables, legumes, cereals, especially wholegrain, moderate consumption of fish and limited consumption of dairy products and low consumption of meat, cold cuts and sweet, fatty and salty products,” he said.

“It favors olive oil among added fats but does not recommend its consumption ad libitum,” Herberg added. “The Mediterranean diet does not, therefore, under any circumstances, as the Italian arguments suggest, promote cheeses and processed meats, whether Italian or not.”

Herberg also pointed out that many studies confirm the science behind the development and deployment of Nutri-Score. For example, he cited epidemiological studies from France (SUVIMAX, NutriNet-Santé), Spain (SUN and ERICA cohorts) and Europe.

Herberg also refuted the idea that the Nutri-Score algorithm does not rate foods as bad or good.

“It is a gradual FOPL with five categories presented in colors and letters, which allow consumers to compare the nutritional quality of foods in relative terms and not in absolute value,” he said.

“The goal of Nutri-Score is to help consumers compare the overall nutritional quality of foods that are relevant to be compared or else comparable in terms of use or consumption patterns,” he added.

According to Hercberg, focusing on 100 grams or milliliters instead of a single serving of specific foods is “based on both conceptual, pragmatic, scientific and public health arguments.”

“What is useful for consumers is to be able to compare different breakfast cereals, to identify those with the best nutritional quality,” he added. “Or to compare different vegetable oils or other added fats, or compare different cheeses, different pizzas and different cookies.”

“Finally, for a specific occasion of consumption, let us say breakfast, it is helpful for consumers to be able to compare the differences of nutritional quality between foods usually consumed at this occasion: bread, as refined-grain or whole-grain bread, brioches, breakfast cereals, cookies or rusks,” Herberg continued.

Therefore, Hercberg said, a “simple, objective and standardized common denominator” is needed to allow consumers to recognize at a glance food that exhibits the most favorable nutritional composition compared to others.

According to Hercberg, a standard serving does not exist as it depends on many variables such as age, sex and other conditions of the consumers.

“Many studies have shown that consumers have difficulty to assess the amount corresponding to a serving accurately,” he concluded.

Available as an app for Android devices, myLabel’s Nutri-Perso allows consumers to add to the Nutri-Score ratings their profile, goals in terms of health and food sustainability, age, gender, and health status.

Accordingly, Nutri-Perso will then generate new scores for the Nutri-Score-rated food packages.

Developed in France by the Research Center for the Study and Observation of Living Conditions and the National Consumer Institute, Nutri-Perso allows its users to add preferences to food when buying groceries to avoid specific types of food.

These include filters against food with too many additives, pesticides or antibiotics, and food that harms biodiversity or fuels deforestation. It also promotes food that ensures animal wellbeing, good working conditions or fair pay for farmers.

In a press conference, Christophe Hurbin, founder of the myLabel application, praised Nutri-Score as “useful” but said that it could make the consumer “feel guilty” when buying poorly rated products to the point that they might stop buying those products.

“We want to bring nuance, because yes, a product might be very sweet, there is no doubt, but we still can consume it [in a reasonable way],” he said.

Nutri-Score rated packaged food items based on salt, sugar, fat and caloric content per 100 grams or milliliters of the food.

On that basis, the Nutri-Score algorithm assigns a color/letter code to the package, from the healthy “Green A” down to the “Red E.”

According to Nutri-Score creators, comparing foods by a single quantity allows consumers to choose the best products within a given category.

However, instead of focusing on the 100-gram quantity, Nutri-Perso modifies that notion adding the concept of “portion” tailored to the needs, profile and preferences of the app user.

According to its creators, Nutri-Perso will take away the “sense of guilt” in buying foods with a low Nutri-Score rating, such as chocolate or cheeses, by suggesting to its users the quantity they should consume.

During the press conference, Hurbin stressed how Nutri-Perso would not replace Nutri-Score.

However, the standard quantity in Nutri-Score is one of the reasons the labeling system is criticized by many food companies, such as cheese producers in France and olive oil producers in Italy and Spain.

Since its scores refer to 100 grams, producers such as the General Confederation of Roquefort have repeatedly said, Nutri-Score does not allow consumers to estimate the true impact of food intake in portions that might be way smaller.

That also appears to be one of the reasons Nutri-Score did not come out as consumers’ preferred labeling system in a recent multi-country survey conducted by the Italy-based Waste Watcher International observatory on food and sustainability.

The survey has traced a basic profile of consumers in seven countries: Spain, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and Russia.

In each country, 1,000 consumers were surveyed, their food choices and food labeling preferences were then analyzed. The representative population sample was selected by the market research firm Ipsos.

“One of the most interesting findings of our study is a strong preference given to the traditional nutritional labels which are mostly found on the back of the packages,” Andrea Segrè, an agricultural policy professor at the University of Bologna and scientific director of Waste Watcher International, told Olive Oil Times.

“When confronted with the French Nutri-Score or the Italian Nutrinform Battery labeling system, consumers showed that the third option, the traditional label, comes out as competitive,” he added.

More specifically, Nutri-Score as a whole has been intensely disliked in countries well known for their opposition to its adoption, such as Italy. However, consumers did not fully appreciate it in other countries such as the U.K., the U.S., Canada and Russia.

Consumers from Germany, the U.K., Russia, and Canada preferred Nutrinform Battery over Nutri-Score. Still, in several countries, the standard nutrition label fared even better.

The survey analyzed why each label was appreciated or disliked in every country in depth. Interestingly, Nutri-Score failed to attract consumers in Italy but still outpaced the Italian Nutrinform Battery regarding usefulness, informative potential or awareness.

Among the findings, Segrè highlighted the modest results of the so-called traffic-light food labeling systems adopted in several countries.

“It is widely adopted in the Anglo-Saxon countries. Still, in those countries, it does not seem to be really appreciated by consumers,” he said.

According to the study, most consumers want to know more about the products they are buying, including information that might not always be included in a rating score placed on a food package.

“On a global scale, what we are seeing is poor nutritional education,” Segrè said. “The colored labels do not help because it is obvious that when you see red, you will hit the brakes. Instead, you will go forward when you see green.”

“It is simple, but that is why it is wrong because you don’t need nutritional education anymore. You just have to trust whatever it is represented by the labels,” he added.

Some of the most significant criticisms of Nutri-Score come from olive oil producers. Extra virgin olive oil and olive oil are rated with a “Yellow C” by Nutri-Score, a medium classification due to their high-fat content.

According to some, including Unaprol, the Italian olive oil producer consortium, Nutri-Score does not consider the micronutrients that endow extra virgin olive oil with its unique health benefits. As a result, many professionals in the olive oil sector consider Nutri-Score to be punitive.

However, the system’s architects disagree with these assertions and insist criticism of Nutri-Score is frequently made without context.

“Olive oil is in no way penalized by Nutri-Score, Pilar Galan, a nutritional epidemiology researcher at the Sorbonne Paris Nord University, told Olive Oil Times in a 2021 interview. “Olive oil is rated C, which is the best score for added fats. This ranking is fully consistent with public health recommendations.”

In Italy, Spain, Canada and Russia, the Waste Watcher International survey found that almost half of the surveyed consumers would assign a “Green A” to extra virgin olive oil. Only a minority in all surveyed countries would classify extra virgin olive oil as currently rated by Nutri-Score.

“The reality is that if there is a possible penalty for olive oils in Nutri-Score since quantities are not considered,” Segrè said. “It does not make sense to compare extra virgin olive oil with sweetened soda drinks. You would not dress a salad with those.”

“And you would not drink olive oil as you do with a pop,” he added. “Based on our survey, it is possible that a number of consumers exposed to Nutri-Score will look at that extra virgin olive oil’s average classification and buy it less than before. Even more in countries where olive oil culture is not affirmed.”

• BFMTV
• Ansa
• Waste Watcher Observatory

The commission’s efforts are part of the recently-approved Farm to Fork strategy, an element of the European Green Deal announced in 2019.

Although interested parties have until March 7, 2022, to submit their views, 53 written submissions had already been accepted after just three days.

Thirty-one percent of these were received from the olive oil-producing countries of Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece.

Numerous groups have criticized the Nutri-Score front-of-pack labeling system in these countries, which is the perceived front runner. At issue is the score given extra virgin olive oil – a Yellow‑C – which is lower than the score given to artificially-sweetened carbonated drinks, such as Coke Zero.

One of the primary goals of the consultation is to decide on nutritional labeling. The commission is currently considering five main options, ranging from voluntary information to a harmonized front-of-pack nutrition label, which would be mandatory across the European Union.

However, the criteria used to determine how nutritional value is presented is the issue most concerning olive oil producers and advocates of the Mediterranean diet.

The Italian Nutrinform Battery has received considerable support as an alternative to Nutri-Score. Rather than assigning each product a “grade” from Green A to Red E, it gives specific numerical data and isolates saturated fats from other lipids.

Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Bari, in Puglia, Italy, have proposed the Med Index, which considers the sustainability and environmental impact of foods and drinks.

In addition to the questions around nutritional information, the commission is seeking consensus on the issue of extending the mandatory use of origin labeling, noting that “consumers are increasingly affected by a range of considerations when making food decisions, including the origin of the food and the length of the food supply chain.”

• European Commission

He added that the whole country is fighting against “a system that aims at conditioning the consumer instead of informing the public.”

Patuanelli told lawmakers that the Italian government is actively working with other European Union members to unite the countries opposed to implementing the French-born food rating and front-of-pack labeling (FOPL) system.

He said that it remains an ongoing process, given that the European Commission plans to select a pan-European FOPL by the end of 2022.

Among the Italian minister’s grievances with Nutri-Score is that it labels food as either “good” or “bad,” which he insisted “are categories that cannot be applied to food.”

However, replacing Nutri-Score with an alternative system remains an uphill battle for the Italians as France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Spain have already adopted the FOPL.

The labeling system rates food on a five letter-color scale, from the healthiest “Green A” down to the “Red E.”

Nutri-Score evaluates food items for the presence of fat, salt, sugar and calories in 100 grams or 100 milliliters samples of food products. Members of the olive oil sector across Europe all take issue with the “Yellow C” given to all types of olive oil and several other vegetable oils.

However, supporters of Nutri-Score stress that the system is meant to be used to compare products of the same category and emphasize that a “Yellow C” is the best score for edible fat.

Despite these disclaimers, Patuanelli and many of his allies in Italy and abroad contend Nutri-Score is a system that promotes “processed and ultra-processed food, mostly marketed with environmentally unfriendly packages, and could seriously harm [foods certified with a] Protected Designations of Origin and Protected Geographical Indication.”

Protected Designation of Origin and Protected Geographical Indication certifications are overseen by the E.U. and allow member states to protect local food specialties, such as meats, cheeses, wines and olive oils, from imitations and forgeries. Coincidentally, many of these specialties have low Nutri-Score ratings.

Furthermore, many producers argue that rating extra virgin olive oil with a “Yellow C” ignores the product’s exceptional nutraceutical qualities.

As a result of intense pressure from across the sector, the Spanish government has already exempted extra virgin olive oil from its adoption of Nutri-Score.

The International Olive Council also is lobbying for Nutri-Score to change its grading criteria to accommodate the health benefits inherent to extra virgin olive oil consumption.

However, Nutri-Score continues to be rolled across the food industry in some of Europe’s largest economies. In the last few weeks, several French fast-food restaurants have started using Nutri-Score to label their products.

According to the Italian olive oil producers association Unaprol, that is “the latest madness” of the Nutri-Score system since French fries are labeled with a “Green B,” one score higher than extra virgin olive oil.

According to Unaprol, processed burger buns are labeled with a “Yellow C” despite providing none of the micronutrients found in extra virgin olive oil.

“It is an unacceptable situation, an organized attack against the symbols of the Italian high-quality food products, well behind any scientific evidence and against common sense,” said David Granieri, Unaprol’s president.

“We cannot accept the devaluation of a symbol of the Mediterranean diet, which is unanimously recognized for its nutraceutical anti-inflammatory and antioxidant qualities,” he added.

Patuanelli also reminded legislators that the Italian government continues promoting Nutrinform Battery, a controversial rival FOPL introduced to demonstrate an individual food item’s nutritional value in the context of a balanced diet.

• Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry Policies
• Ansa

The researchers said that the results of their study, published in Nature, show the Food Compass Score (FCS) could also improve the quality of existing products, help establish new healthier dietary guidelines and even inform agricultural trade policies.

The nutritional index took three years to develop and rates products from one to 100, the latter being the healthiest score.

The researchers wrote that FCS was developed and tested “using a detailed national database of 8,032 foods and beverages consumed by Americans.”

“It scores 54 different characteristics across nine domains representing different health-relevant aspects of foods, drinks and mixed meals, providing for one of the most comprehensive nutrient profiling systems in the world,” they added.

“The characteristics and domains were selected based on nutritional attributes linked to major chronic diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular problems and cancer, as well as to the risk of undernutrition, especially for mothers, young children and the elderly,” the researchers continued.

Fruits have the highest average scores, of 73.9, with most raw fruits scoring 100. Meanwhile, vegetables receive an average score of 69.1, with similar ratings given to legumes, nuts and seeds.

Among beverages, 100-percent fruit juices score 67 on average, while energy drinks and sugar-sweetened sodas receive a 27.6.

FCS gives a score of 85 to olive oils, making it the healthiest choice for added fats. By comparison, lard receives a 19.

The fact that healthy products, such as olive oil, receive a higher rating compared to other food rating systems – such as Nutri-Score, which gives olive oil the third-highest rating out of five – should not come as a surprise.

According to the researchers, FCS focuses on the nutritional qualities of food and takes its unhealthy attributes into account. This is a slightly different approach compared to other major food rating systems.

In the European Union, food labeling systems such as Nutri-Score tend to focus on potentially harmful characteristics of food such as calories, saturated fat and sodium content.

Contrastly, FCS includes certain micronutrients and phytochemicals that are not always considered by other food rating systems.

Nutrients, food ingredients and how they are processed are scored based on “the latest cutting-edge science,” the researchers wrote, adding that the scores would be regularly updated.

Unlike other food rating systems, the researchers added that FCS can be used to rate mixed dishes “and meals using one consistent score (existing systems subjectively group and score foods differently).”

The researchers used pizza as an example. “In the case of pizza, many other systems have separate scoring algorithms for the wheat, meat and cheese, but not the finished product,” they wrote.

“Consistent scoring of diverse items can also help assess and compare combinations of food and beverages that could be sold and consumed together, such as an entire shopping basket, a person’s daily diet pattern or a portfolio of foods sold by a particular company,” the researchers added.

Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School at Tufts University, said that “once you get beyond ‘eat your veggies, avoid soda,’ the public is pretty confused about how to identify healthier choices in the grocery store, cafeteria, and restaurant.”

Researchers hope that FCS will encourage the food industry to develop healthier food and reformulate the current products. It could also be used as the basis for local and national policies regarding package labeling, taxation and restrictions on marketing to children.

They added that the system could be used nearly everywhere once adopted, including in food shops, restaurants, hospitals and schools.

The science-based FCS also could be used “to inform agricultural trade policy and guide institutional and individual investors on environmental, social and corporate governance investment decisions,” the researchers concluded.

• Nature
• Eurekalert

The authors of the new Med Index said that it was created to allow consumers to choose their food at a glance while also pushing producers to enhance the quality and sustainability of their products.

The focus of the labeling system is extra virgin olive oil and the food items traditionally associated with the Mediterranean diet.

The researchers at the University of Bari, in Puglia, said how current labeling platforms such as Nutri-Score or the Italian alternative Nutrinform Battery do not consider the environmental impact of food production. They also questioned the criteria used by both systems to qualify food as healthy or unhealthy.

“The multi-disciplinary research team that developed Med Index has highlighted several Nutri-Score shortcomings,” Maria Lisa Clodoveo, an associate professor at the University of Bari’s interdisciplinary school of medicine, told Olive Oil Times.

“Nutri-Score rates food for a well-balanced diet on the basis of 100-gram or 100-milliliter samples. Still, we all know that not all food is consumed in the same quantities,” she added. “Therefore, a paradox is generated for many different products, whose role in a healthy diet cannot be judged on the basis of 100 grams. For example, nobody would eat 100 milliliters of extra virgin olive oil or 100 grams of Parmigiano Reggiano.”

Clodoveo said that a lot had changed since Nutri-Score’s first introduction in France.

“In the last years, we have experienced a significant acceleration in knowledge,” she said. “We do not talk of calories anymore but talk about nutrigenomics and nutrigenetics.”

The new Med Index places extra virgin olive oil among the most relevant ingredients in a healthy diet. By comparison, Nutri-Score rates extra virgin olive oil with a “Yellow C” on a scale from “Green A” to “Red E.”

“That same rating is given to olive oil, seeds oil and many other fats that do not share in any way the healthy and unique profile of extra virgin olive and its polyphenols, through which it plays a pivotal nutrigenomic role,” Clodoveo said.

“Nutri-Score is therefore not scientifically up to date and does not take the latest research into due account,” she added.

To the Italian scientists, the C‑rating for extra virgin olive oil “is a synonym for mediocrity,” Clodoveo said. “Nutri-Score can not tell vegetable fat that have polyphenols and those that do not.”

However, Serge Hercberg, the developer of Nutri-Score, told Olive Oil Times in a July 2020 interview that the point of Nutri-Score is to compare items in the same food group and not among food groups.

“[The C for olive oil is] the best score possible for added fats and even for vegetable oils,” he said. “The public health recommendations do not suggest consuming olive oil without limits, but they encourage consumers to favor it over other vegetable oils and especially over animal fats.”

The Italian standard, which has been created as an alternative to Nutri-Score, Nutrinform Battery, also does not convince the Med Index researchers.

It is a food labeling platform that has gone through a swift development process that involved relevant academic institutions. Still, Clodoveo said, “it did not involve the Italian scientific world as a whole.”

“[Nutrinform Battery] uses an iconographic representation, the battery, at the opposite of what common sense tells us,” she added. “When we think of a battery, we can associate it being fully charged with full health, as many food supplements do in their graphics. Nutrinform Battery goes the opposite way.”

The Med Index does not only talk about nutrition.

“Medical researchers, food chemistry scientists, economists, physicians, psychologists and nutritionists were asked to cooperate in developing Med Index,” Clodoveo said. “The result is a colored rating scale which only deploys ‘good,’ ‘better’ and ‘best’ ratings while focusing specifically on extra virgin olive oil and the other Mediterranean diet specialties.”

The labeling system devised in Bari uses a pyramid to show how many portions are included in the labeled pack, how much physical activity is required to compensate for the energy provided by the food item and how well it scores in terms of nutritional, environmental and social sustainability.

However, there are some limitations to the new labeling system. The Med Index does not include processed and ultra-processed food as well as those with specific additives or adjuvants.

“It is inspired by the MedDiet principles, such as consuming different kinds of seasonal food and food subjected to low or no processing,” Clodoveo said. “We have established a series of complex criteria that allow the consumer to make a conscious choice in a matter of seconds.”

Among these criteria are how the income generated by purchasing the food is spread throughout the production chain and the level of gender equality in the supply chain.

The prospect of labeling extra virgin olive oil within the Med Index rating system has been welcomed by producers in Italy.

“It seems a good solution to introduce in a moment in which the olive oil sector is giving so much in terms of trying to educate the consumers about its qualities,” Elia Pellegrino, president of the Italian Olive Milling Association, told Olive Oil Times.

“Until now, consumers did not show a profound interest in extra virgin olive oil labeling. They are making most of their choices on the basis of the price of the product instead,” she added. “Our hopes are for a simple label, which the consumers can easily understand.”

According to Pellegrino, the most relevant issue for producers “is that the label certifies the unique qualities of extra virgin olive oil.”

Med Index proponents explained that due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the acceleration of nutrition knowledge and environmental and biodiversity protection, the European Union should not rush to have its labeling standard in place.

“We hope that the 2022 deadline for choosing the labeling platform will be delayed,” Clodoveo said. “It is a step of the Farm-to-Fork strategy; the decision Brussels will take will affect Europe for at least the next 10 years.”

According to the researchers, the fact that a proposed label such as Nutri-Score was adopted only by a few countries and fiercely opposed by others shows that the current debate is not inclusive enough.

“The idea to exclude some kinds of food from Nutri-Score, such as those protected by the European designations of origin, further shows that this proposal falls short of its goals,” Clodoveo said.

“We need the scientific community to debate for consumers to understand what labeling means, for policymakers to evaluate what science has brought to the table,” she concluded. “It is a big decision that will have an impact on agri-food production and marketing.”

• Italia Olivicola

Their often strongly-worded statements come after a petition signed by almost 300 scientists and nutritionists asked Brussels to chose Nutri-Score as the official European FOPL. The coalition believes Nutri-Score to be the most scientifically sound labeling platform.

“Nutri-Score represents a real danger that could compromise the Italian agrifood system,” Minister of Agriculture Stefano Patuanelli said while asking the whole Italian food industry to oppose the French-born FOPL.

“The harsh reality is that the Italian exports reach markets others long for,” Patuanelli added. “They want to use Nutri-Score to disrupt our unique talent to export products with a significant added value… To hit [Italian food exports] they are ready to attack the Mediterranean diet, which is recognized by UNESCO as an intangible part of human heritage.”

The minister confirmed the Italian government’s commitment to actively oppose Nutri-Score and reach out to other interested countries in the E.U. to form a united front.

His remarks came during a hearing in front of the Italian Parliament in which representatives from all major political parties expressed similar concerns about Nutri-Score.

Strong political attacks have been directed at Walter Ricciardi, one of the advisors to the Ministry of Health, who signed the pro-Nutri-Score petition.

Matteo Salvini, leader of the conservative Lega Nord party in the governing coalition, asked Ricciardi to resign due to his stance on the food labeling system.

Opposition to Nutri-Score runs deep in the Italian political system, with local governments, such as Piedmont, expressing their opposition to the FOPL. Italian representatives in the European Parliament, including Paolo De Castro, also have appealed to both the political and the scientific worlds to join the fight against what he described as the “wrong system… that puts at risk our whole food heritage.”

“[It is wrong] to give votes to food, when what is needed is to offer the consumers information about the origin and the characteristics of that food to let them make more conscious choices,” he added.

Ettore Prandini, president of the national farmer association Coldiretti, also sided with Patuanelli and asked for an “urgent intervention to stop the attack on Italian national food products.”

According to Prandini, should Nutri-Score be approved, “it could even spread on a global level, directly threatening the €46 billion Italian food exports recorded in 2020.”

While Nutri-Score architect Serge Hercberg and experts such as Pilar Galan have repeatedly said that Nutri-Score is an ally of the Mediterranean diet and allows consumers to compare products belonging to the same category, Italian farmers continue to oppose it.

Promoting the Nutri-Score classification is like spreading “fake news,” according to Città dell’Olio, an association that includes Italian municipalities involved in olive oil culture.

“We must firmly oppose the fake news spread about a nutraceutical healthy relevant food such as extra virgin olive oil that the Food and Drug Administration promotes as a remedy for ensuring consumers health,” said Michele Sonnessa, president of Città dell’Olio.

“We side with Minister Patuanelli and the deputy secretary, Francesco Battistoni, to once and for all drop the Nutri-Score platform,” he added. “We are facing a fierce attack on the Italian and Mediterranean food culture and its foundations, such as extra virgin olive oil.”

Sonnessa said assigning the “Yellow C” to extra virgin olive oil is unacceptable and serves as a warning sign to consumers against purchasing the product.

However, Hercberg and Galan have long argued that the “Yellow C” is the best possible grade for the animal fats and vegetable oils category.

In a press release, the Italian Agricultural Confederation (CIA) made similar remarks, advocating against the adoption of Nutri-Score and for additional research into the alternative Nutrinform Battery labeling platform, which is backed by the Italian government.

The “battery labels,” as they are often called, were officially introduced in Brussels last January by the Italian government.

Nutrinform’s promoters like that the FOPL does not label foods as either good or bad, instead showing the energy intake and the nutritional values of the selected food item using a battery graphic.

In their view, this representation of the nutritional information helps consumers understand how a specific product can be part of a healthy diet. However, Hercberg, Galan and many other experts in Europe have expressed doubts about the efficacy of Nutrinform Battery and questioned its scientific background.

The European Commission is expected to select one uniform FOPL to be used across the 27-member bloc by the end of 2022.

• Ansa
• Italian Agricultural Federation
• Città dell’Olio

In a public call, they praised the high scientific profile of Nutri-Score and rebuked the alternative proposals, which they believe can not compete with Nutri-Score’s proven efficacy.

In the petition, the Nutri-Score’s supporters said that alternative labeling systems such as the Nutrinform Battery are the result of the pressure of “powerful lobbies, supported by some member states.”

According to scientists on the call, those lobbies “have used misleading statements to discredit and offset the choice of Nutri-Score.”

More specifically, the petition attacks the Italian-backed Nutrinform Battery.

“It is not supported by any scientific evidence whatsoever,” the petition reads. “Moreover, its concept and design are very similar to the GDA/RIs [guideline daily amount and reference intakes] format set up by food companies in the 2000s and shown by numerous studies to be entirely ineffective.”

Nutri-Score is a letter and color-based food labeling system, which has already been adopted by several European countries and is the front-runner among the several food labeling platforms that E.U. is considering for adoption, a decision that the European Commission expects to announce by the end of 2022.

In the petition, 269 scientists and health professionals joined by 21 expert associations from 32 different countries emphasized how Nutri-Score “has been the subject of numerous scientific studies published in peer-reviewed international scientific journals demonstrating its effectiveness and relevance to consumers and public health and its superiority to other labels implemented in other countries or supported by pressure groups.”

Attached to the call, there are references to more than 40 research papers that explored the effects and the impact of the labeling system adoption.

“Only science should guide policy decision-making in the field of public health,” the petition reads. “The choice of the single harmonized front-of-pack nutrition label for Europe must meet this single requirement and not the interests of economic operators (manufacturers, retailers or specific food sectors) or states that defend them.”

Nutri-Score has already been adopted by several countries, including Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. However, Italy, the Czech Republic and several other countries have voiced their concerns about the negative impact Nutri-Score may have on their traditional food products.

Highly renowned food, including many products with protected geographical indicators, have nutritional values that often do not allow them to obtain the top Nutri-Score classifications.

That is the case of extra virgin olive oil, which is currently labeled as a “Yellow C,” a couple of grades lower than the “Green A,” the healthiest rating by the FOPL.

This is mainly because Nutri-Score considers the nutritional qualities for a given quantity of 100 grams or 100 milliliters so that any vegetable oil or animal fat cannot score higher than a “Yellow C.”

However, proponents of Nutri-Score have long asserted that the FOPL is meant to enable consumers to make comparisons among food belonging to the same food category.

The signatories provide some examples in the documents attached to the call, such as “comparing fruit cookies to chocolate cookies; or meat lasagna to salmon lasagna or spinach lasagna… In each of these categories, the Nutri-Score can vary largely and so it provides useful information for consumers, permitting them to make an informed choice.”

The group of European scientists supporting the implementation of Nutri-Score also attached to a paper entitled “The Front-of-Pack nutrition label Nutri-Score: a public health tool to improve the nutritional status of the population that is based on rigorous scientific background” to the call.

In the paper, the inner workings of the classification system, Nutri-Score’s algorithm and the scientific background upon which Nutri-Score was based are all examined.

The paper also aims to disarm some concerns about the French-born FOPL, emphasizing that “Nutri-Score does not aim to inform about the nutritional quality of foods in absolute value. It is not intended to characterize foods as ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’ as does a binary logo.”

Instead, the paper argues that the gradual nature of the logo, with five color/letter classifications, offers a more comprehensive comparison among food items and allows consumers to make an informed decision about what purchases are best for them.

“We have to make it clear that Nutri-Score does not give a seal of approval and therefore does not recommend foods classified A or B on the pretext that they would be ‘healthy,’” the paper concluded. “It only emphasizes that these products are to be preferred over their lower-ranked Nutri-Score equivalents or alternatives that can be ‘competitive’ with the consumer at the time of purchase or consumption.”

Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain, Switzerland and France announced that they would form an intra-European committee to facilitate debate on the French front-of-pack labeling system (FOPL) and bring about a smooth transition to one uniform food labeling system in the bloc.

According to the Luxembourg Chronicle, the Transnational Coordination Mechanism includes both a steering committee and a scientific branch.

The steering committee includes all the relevant local authorities focused on Nutri-Score in the seven countries and will help disseminate the new logo within the food sector, from large retailers to small businesses.

Meanwhile, the scientific branch will focus on possible developments and implementations for Nutri-Score.

“Its objective is to facilitate the use of Nutri-Score by manufacturers in the food sector, to help small businesses and to liaise with consumers, by implementing common and efficient procedures,” the Transnational Coordination Mechanism said.

The announcement has been cheered by the European Consumer Organization (BEUC), which is among Nutri-Score’s strongest supporters.

“BEUC welcomes the initiative to help a wider number of consumers benefit from the Nutri-Score,” the organization said. “To date, Nutri-Score has been acknowledged as the most effective label to help consumers make healthier choices in the supermarket.”

Despite numerous members of the academic, private and public sector uniting behind Nutri-Score, the FOPL still faces significant opposition from some members of the agricultural industry and their allies in government.

In Italy, industry and institutions have been combating the implementation of Nutri-Score since its inception and the guidelines for the nation-wide implementation of its competing labeling system, Nutrinform Battery, have just been published.

Opposition to Nutri-Score is also growing in Spain, as the FOPL will be officially introduced within weeks.

Many of the country’s olive oil producers and businesses rebuffed the Ministry of Consumption’s recent decision to exempt olive oil from the Nutri-Score labels on their packages.

Two prominent producer organizations insisted that the French FOPL must be upgraded so that olive oil will not be graded with a “Yellow C” on the Nutri-Score healthy food scale.

The Spanish Association of Olive Municipalities (AEMO), which is involved in olive growing, said that the only way to resolve the current impasse is to reform the FOPL. The organization would like extra virgin olive oil labeled with a “Green A,” which is the best possible classification in the Nutri-Score scale.

The association said that omitting olive oil from the labeling scheme would create too much confusion. AEMO added that without reforming Nutri-Score to reflect extra virgin olive oil’s health benefits, Spanish exports within the European Union would be severely impacted.

“In two cases out of three, [intra‑E.U. exports] are fueled by olive oil’s healthy record,” AEMO said.

A similar sentiment has been echoed by the Spanish producers association QVExtra! International. In a note, the organization asked for a review of the Nutri-Score labeling platform so that extra virgin olive oil may be labeled with the highest rating, while non-virgin olive oil should be labeled with the “Greenish B.”

However, prominent proponents of Nutri-Score, including Pilar Galan, insist that Nutri-Score allows consumers to compare foods belonging to similar categories and olive oil has the best possible rating in the fats and oils category.

“Nutri-Score in no way penalizes olive oil,” Galan told Olive Oil Times. “Olive oil is rated C, which is the best score for added fats, seasoning or cooking, and even vegetable oils. This ranking is fully consistent with public health recommendations. In Spain, as elsewhere, [those recommendations] do not suggest the consumption of olive oil without limit.”

While some in the sector are pushing to improve olive oil’s Nutri-Score classification, the Spanish Association of the Origin denominations, Origen España, has said it would prefer adopting the Nutrinform Battery labeling platform.

A spokeswoman told reporters that the organization believes the Italian system will be “more in line with reality.”

The organization, which represents more than 200,000 Spanish producers with a Protected Geographical Indication or Protected Designation of Origin, shares the Italian position about the universal adoption of Nutri-Score for high-quality specialty products.

• Food Navigator
• EFA News
• Revista Almaceite

The French-born front-of-pack label (FOPL), which had already been adopted by several companies in Germany, will now be available on a voluntary basis to all food packaging companies.

Food Minister Julia Klöckner called the adoption of Nutri-Score “one of the major nutritional policy projects” in Germany by offering consumers an easy-to-understand way to compare food products on the shelves.

In a press release, the minister emphasized how the government hopes Nutri-Score will appear on a wide range of products since it represents an answer to years of discussions about how to regulate the amounts of sugar, salt and fat found in food.

“Now, business and trade have to go along with it,” she said, referring to the publication of the legislation in the Federal Law Gazette.

Nutri-Score is hardly a novelty for German consumers. According to the German newspaper Weser Kurier, as early as last spring the Hamburg Consumer Center had already found almost 1,000 products labeled with the French classification system on supermarket shelves.

While the five-colored food grading system can already be seen on food items ranging from vegetables to frozen pizza and dairy products to fish, it is now expected to become even more widespread.

Some of the largest retail chains, including Lidl and Aldi, have welcomed Nutri-Score and are starting to put their substantial weight and influence behind the system.

In a press release, officials from Lidl said: “Now that the legal basis has been founded, we will begin labeling all of our branded products.”

Aldi, too, has spoken of a quick introduction of Nutri-Score: “We are already in contact with our suppliers regarding the labeling of our products.”

Consumer organizations also greeted the new system with enthusiasm.

Klaus Müller, the executive director of the Federation of the Consumers Associations in Germany, said mandating Nutri-Score labels on all foods may lead to a competition among producers since “it is now worthwhile to manufacture better, healthier products.”

The German adoption of Nutri-Score was not met with unanimous consensus in Europe, however. Ivan Vacondio, head of the Italian industrial food companies federation, Federalimentare, referred to “disappointment of the Italian producers for a choice that appears hasty and not thoroughly appropriate for the German food traditions.”

Vacondio also noted how the German Nutri-Score adoption decree refers to the FOPL “according to the guidelines set by the copyright holder, which is an agency connected to the French Health Ministry.”

“This means that the attempt of modifying the algorithm to adapt it to the national guidelines is legally unfeasible,” he added, in reference to the ongoing talks in Germany about specific modifications to the newly adopted classification system. The German Food Ministry said talks are still ongoing.

Among the issues Italian producers and politicians take with Nutri-Score is its low rating of traditional foods, such as extra virgin olive oil, which is graded with a C. They argue that Nutri-Score takes these foods out of their dietary context and the FOPL classification system may drive some consumers away from making healthier choices as a result.

Slovakia has joined the list of countries that do not endorse the French FOPL, with the country’s ministry of agriculture opting instead to adopt the Nutrinform Battery, which is the rival food classification and labeling system developed in Italy and sponsored by the Italian government.

According to local news agency Aktuality, Slovakian Minister of Agriculture Jan Mikovsky, believes “that it would be appropriate to reach a harmonized nutrition front-of-pack labeling system at E.U. level capable of meeting the dietary needs of all E.U. citizens.”

A spokesperson for the minister added that “clarity, non-discrimination, objectivity and scientific bases are the attributes promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture. Nutri-Score does not seem to be the best tool for labeling, given the mentioned principles.”

According to the ministry, the best candidate FOPL is the Nutrinform Battery.

“The reason is that it evaluates the nutritional status of a food more accurately and reliably, as it takes into account specific nutrient values in relation to the portion, comparing them with the daily reference intake,” the spokesperson said.

Even after Berlin formally adopted Nutri-Score, the E.U.-wide debate on which FOPL to adopt and whether or not it should be mandatory is far from over.

The Council of the European Union, which is currently under a German presidency, will likely push member states to present their own suggestions on the matter by the end of the year.

• Weser Kurier
• Euractiv

“Today we can finally present the Italian optional nutritional logo, Nutrinform, that takes into account the daily nutritional intake in order to facilitate consumers in making a conscious choice, promoting a healthy, varied and balanced nutrition,” said Bellanova.

The “daily intake” concept represents one of the main differences between Nutrinform and the French-born Nutri-Score system. While the latter focuses on the stand-alone product on sale, with a label summarizing its characteristics, Nutrinform considers the product within the context of a complex daily diet.

The Nutrinform presents the calories, fat, saturated fats, sugar and sodium contents in a single food portion and compares the percentage of those contents with what is expected in a healthy daily nutritional intake.

Nutri-Score, on the other hand, classifies food with five colors and five letters (A to E) to give the consumers immediate information on the nutritional characteristics of a single food package.

Bellanova expressed why Nutrinform is considered a better alternative than Nutri-Score by Italian authorities.

“We believe this [food labeling] system puts the citizen center stage and not the global market,” she argued. “It also stimulates the critical abilities of the consumers who should not be misled by colors or images that have nothing to do with Science, and it also defends the unique heritage of the Mediterranean diet.”

Referring to the inner workings of the Nutri-Score single-food classification, Bellanova stressed that “diet and nutritional well-being are concepts much more complex than an algorithm.”

“Consumers have the right to be correctly informed, and our food excellencies can not be penalized by traffic lights [placed on food packaging], Bellanova added. “The promotion of a healthy diet requires a multidisciplinary approach. Nutrinform is our alternative to Nutri-Score, but it also is much better. It does not penalize [food], it does not say what is good or what is evil, it informs [the consumers].”

Italian farmers and growers have been strong supporters of the Nutrinform system from the start. After the latest announcement by the Ministry, Massimo Giansanti, president of the Confagricoltura federation, underlined how Nutri-Score “classifies food (…) without considering the quantities normally consumed nor the nutritional diet, and as such penalizing some excellencies of the Mediterranean Diet.” He cited the case of olive oil.

In Spain, the leading olive oil world producer, authorities have formally introduced the Nutri-Score system, but only because “it will not be applied to olive oil products,” Confagricoltura noted — an exclusion to bypass a red-colored classification in the United Kingdom and a grade lower than even rapeseed oil in France.

Those inconsistencies are avoided by the Italian system that has now been signed.

The Nutrinform Battery system will not be applied to most Italian PGI and PDO products specified the Ministry since additional symbols could prevent the consumer from recognizing such designations.

“The Nutrinform label is the Italian answer to the misleading logos introduced in Northern Europe,” said Daniele Salvagno, head of the Veneto region branch of the Coldiretti farmers association. Nutrinform, he noted, “protects the Made in Italy that the French Nutri-Score or the British traffic lights penalize, as they do with the Mediterranean diet and the best Italian productions PDO and PGI. We are protecting specialties such as the Parmigiano Reggiano and Grana Padano, extra virgin olive oil and the cold cuts that under the pressure from large corporations risked being rejected instead of being promoted within the European Union.”

In a note, Coldiretti underlined how those “discriminatory and incomplete” labeling systems “end up excluding healthy and natural food that we had on our tables for centuries in favor of artificial products for which in some cases the exact recipe is unknown. The risk is to promote carbonated drinks with sweeteners instead of sugar and hurt the long-life elixir extra virgin olive oil, considered the symbol of the Mediterranean diet.”

While Italian producers will be able to use the Nutrinform label on their products, they will not be required to do so because its adoption will not be mandatory.

That approach is at the core of the Italian authority’s effort to make the European Union change its view about Nutri-Score.

“We ask that the European Commission switch to a labeling system on a voluntary basis,” said Bellanova, “a system that can transparently inform consumers without conditioning their choices.”

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• Ministry of Agriculture
• Confagricoltura reaction
• Coldiretti statement

Italian detractors of Nutri-Score, including the minister of agriculture, Teresa Bellanova, have criticized the French-backed front-of-pack labeling system as overly simplistic and believe it should not be adopted by the European Union.

Despite the opposition, Nutri-Score has been steadily gaining traction in northern and western Europe and has already been adopted by several large food production companies and several studies have come out in support of its adoption by the 27-member bloc.

However, a pair of Italian food science and nutrition experts told Olive Oil Times that those in favor of adopting Nutri-Score should more carefully consider the consequences of having such a simple and potentially “misleading” pan-European labeling system.

“The Nutri-Score message – five categories, five letters and five colors – constitutes a misleading simplification,” said Francesco Capozzi, a professor at the agricultural and food sciences department of the University of Bologna and co-founder of the Foodomics discipline.

“We have been working to let the consumer receive adequate food education. Do we really have to begin treating our citizens like children?” he asked.

“Nutri-Score is a very arbitrary system that takes into consideration several known parameters, considering some negative and some positive, and gets a score out of them,” added Luca Piretta, a gastroenterologist and professor of food science and human nutrition at the University Campus Biomedico in Rome.

“This brings us to misleading results, where calories, fats or proteins are counted arbitrarily and used to produce colors and labels to classify food,” he added.

Capozzi noted that the current E.U. regulation 1169/11 already provides consumers with all the information that they need to make an informed decision when comparing food items.

“When someone buys some type of food, it is not because the consumers trust advertising, it happens because there is a contract between seller and buyer,” he said. “As a consumer, I can count on the fact that a truthful list of meaningful contents must be published on the package.”

“Oversimplifying nutritional information to the point that it becomes inaccurate represents a violation of that regulation,” Capozzi added. “What counts is the message the consumers receive. It is not only damaging to the consumers’ freedom of choice, but also to food science and nutrition.”

“The quantities of energy, fats or macro nutrients are a relevant part of food content, but food is also made of many other components,” he continued.

Capozzi also argued that Nutri-Score does not reflect an accurate snapshot of a food’s healthful qualities because the algorithm classifies food on the basis of a standardized quantity, such as 100 grams or 100 milliliters.

In the case of a food item such as extra virgin olive oil, which receives a C‑grade from Nutri-Score due to its fat content, the aforementioned quantities do not reflect realistic consumption levels.

“No one will ever eat 100 milliliters of olive oil while dining. Maybe some could eat 100 grams of oats, but in just a small spoon of extra virgin olive oil we find polyphenols and many other compounds which are essential for our own health,” Capozzi said.

“If we consider the alternative labeling system proposed by the Italian government, the Nutrinform Battery, we enter a totally different field, one that focuses on educating consumers while not manipulating their choices,” Piretta added.

According to the specialist, the argument between which front-of-pack labeling system is best comes down to a cultural divide.

“There is no such thing as a bad food or a good food, there is no such thing as a food that can be eaten and one that cannot,” he said. “We need to focus on the quantities as related to the overall food and nutritional daily intake.”

Piretta agreed with Capozzi that the way in which Nutri-Score compares the nutritional content of food is inadequate to capture the health benefits associated with extra virgin olive oil.

“[Nutri-Score] is wrong,” Piretta said. “It is the fear of one specific macronutrient — fat in this case — that annihilates all of the other characteristics of that food.”

“That also happens with hard cheese, which gets low scores from Nutri-Score because of the 100 grams quantity standard,” he added. “Portions of food should be taken into consideration. In a Nutri-Score environment, we could even find sugar-free carbonated drinks that rank better than olive oil because, once again, not all of their contents are considered,” since they are packaged in containers far larger than the standard 100-milliliter measurement used by Nutri-Score.

The two experts believe that if a product is labeled with the warning colors and low scores employed by Nutri-Score, consumers will simply select foods labeled with an A or B grade and ignore the contents of the item.

“The traffic light system in Nutri-Score is simple, yet complex things cannot always be made simple,” Piretta said. “Food education requires time.”

Piretta and Capozzi believe that if a labeling system is to be introduced, it should be used to value the balance among the different products’ average intake.

On the other hand, supporters of Nutri-Score believe that consumers make comparisons among products of the same category.

They argue that, for example, the simplified label allows consumers to more easily determine that extra virgin olive oil – graded with a “C” – is healthier than other common cooking oils, such as palm oil, which is graded as an “E.”

However, Nutri-Score detractors do not believe that consumers will interpret the system’s grades in such a nuanced fashion.

“The consumer will not buy a product labeled C, simply because it is labeled that way,” Piretta rebutted.

To this end, Capozzi argued that “consumers are not used to making a comparison between foods of the same category, but their attention is mainly captured by the absolute score.”

The Nutrinform Battery labeling idea, Piretta argued, considers proportionality, with no demonization of the food contents, including saturated fat, sugar or salt.

“With Nutrinform, those are balanced in servings, that means that if you eat your serving of Parmigiano cheese the Battery will show you how much that portion counts in your overall daily intake,” Piretta said. “Nutrinform allows consumers to identify the category of each nutrient and how much it fills up the battery.”

“It is misleading to believe that to combat the obesity epidemic, for instance, we should remove fat or sugars,” Piretta concluded. “We need to focus on education and not on simplification. We cannot hope to win over obesity misleading people, we need the exact opposite.”

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The non-paper is an official rebuttal to the French-backed Nutri-Score system and introduced a set of “desired principles” that the seven-nation bloc seeks to enshrine in any future E.U.-wide food labeling system.

Italy, the Czech Republic, Greece, Latvia, Hungary, Cyprus and Romania also have asked that the E.U. take a new approach to the whole subject of front-of-pack labeling.

During its presentation, the Italian Minister of Agriculture, Teresa Bellanova, described the document as the basis for a new E.U.-wide scheme which, “should exempt products protected by recognized designations and geographical indications, but also products with a single ingredient, such as olive oil.”

“It will have to be informative and not prescriptive,” she added. “It should take into account the daily nutritional intake, be understandable without using simplistic tools like colors on packages. Diet and nutritional health are concepts much more complex than an algorithm.”

The document seeks to pull the brakes on the front-of-pack nutritional labeling systems currently being adopted by some member states because, wrote the proponents, “established market-led solutions should not run ahead of the European Commission, governments and regulatory authorities in determining decisions that have major implications on public health, cultural values and the internal market.”

While the non-paper does not directly criticize Nutri-Score, the document does so implicitly.

“The system should not provide an overall evaluation of a specific food, but factual information on the individual nutrients contained in a product, in order to make sure that each consumer can choose according to his or her particular conditions and state of health,” the non-paper reads.

Nutri-Score is a front-of-pack nutritional labeling system that assigns both a score (from A to E) and a color to show the nutritional quality of any single package.

However, the coalition behind the non-paper wrote that a E.U.-harmonized front-of-pack nutritional labeling system scheme should consider the totality of daily nutritional intake “rather than a generic threshold of 100 grams or 100 milliliters, in order to avoid the penalization of those foods that are usually consumed in small amounts.”

Nutri-Score assigns a “C” to olive oil due to its fat content per 100 milliliters, a score which repeatedly has been called “discriminatory” by Italian food authorities.

Still, the French system is the front-runner among the food labeling systems being considered by the E.U. since it already has been adopted in France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and, outside the Union, Switzerland.

Even though the E.U. recently approved the introduction of the Italian alternative front-of-pack nutritional labeling system known as Nutrinform Battery on a voluntary basis in Italy, the non-paper appears to imply that consumers already have the information they need, reminding member states that the current E.U. rules already provide for a complete list of nutritional information for 100 grams or 100 milliliters to be included in food packages.

While in recent weeks the European farmers lobby COPA-COGECA expressed its “full support” of Bellanova’s position, several socialist and green members of the European Parliament have announced their support of the “Pro-Nutri-Score” initiative launched by some consumers associations.

Now the non-paper has fueled the debate even further, with the architect of the Nutri-Score, Serge Hercberg, strongly criticizing the Italian position in his most recent tweets.

“The strategy of Italy (and the agroalimentary lobbies) is clear, ” Hercberg wrote. “Nothing more than the unreadable and incomprehensible back-of-pack table of nutritional values.”

Hercberg, who accused Bellanova of denying science, has also attacked the Nutrinform Battery front of pack nutritional labeling system.

“Nutrinform is counter-intuitive, representing the nutrient content through the icon traditionally used to monitor the charge of a telephone, but curiously used in the opposite direction (the more the battery is ‘discharged,’ the better the nutritional quality of the food),” he tweeted.

For the head of the team that devised Nutri-Score, Nutrinform Battery “is complex and difficult to understand due to multiple and confusing information.”

As he did in the past, Hercberg has also stressed that “olive oil is not penalized by Nutri-Score. On the contrary, olive oil is graded with a C, which corresponds to the best possible score for added fats and better ranked than soya, sunflower, corn oils (D), coconut, palm (E) and butter (E). Totally consistent with the Mediterranean diet.”

Hercberg’s reaction to the position of the seven countries has been greeted with some skepticism in Italy.

Francesco Capozzi, a professor at the agricultural and nutritional sciences department of the University of Bologna and founder of the Foodomics discipline, tweeted “who knows if Hercberg, father of the Nutri-Score, knows where the difference lies between nutrition and food science?”

“Judging from how he attacks Italy and whoever does not see the matter as he does, accusing them of an anti-scientific approach, I would say that he does not,” Capozzi added.

The heated debate is far from over.

“Here we go, at the meeting the lobbies were present,” Sylvie Guillaume, a French Member of the European Parliament (MEP) wrote in a statement co-signed by some of her colleagues. “Not in person, but through the voice of several ministers who have defended their interests at the expense of European consumers and therefore of the general interest. This is unacceptable!”

In a tweet, she called Nutri-Score “a precious tool for strengthening the power and the faculty of discernment in terms of consumer health. Europe must not give in to pressure.”

However, in a recent interview, Paolo De Castro, an Italian MEP, stressed how “the consumer should be informed in order to make his or her choice, not be conditioned by colors.”

He also highlighted that there will be sufficient time to find a compromise among the E.U. partners.

While farmers, olive oil producers, food companies and e‑commerce enterprises wait for the E.U. to make a decision on the subject, which the European Commission believes could be reached by 2022, many operators are following the national guidelines and adopting Nutri-Score.

Some producers and early adopters of Nutri-Score, such as Danone and Nestlé, have started marketing products highlighting their Nutri-Score classification as a plus. Some others have even begun to reformulate their food items in order to fare better in a world governed by Nutri-Score.

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• European Union Agriculture and Fisheries Council
• Non-paper

Using data collected from a large population sample, the researchers demonstrated that adopting food labeling systems based on the Food Standards Agency nutrient profiling system (FSAm-NPS) could have an effect on overall mortality.

Since the French-born Nutri-Score front-of-pack (FOP) labeling system is derived from the FSAm-NPS, researchers believe that their results should be considered by the European Union while it is in the process of choosing a common FOP system for its member states.

Serge Hercberg, the creator of Nutri-Score, was one of 55 researchers involved in the study.

By using the data collected in 10 different countries by the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study, the scientists concluded that “consuming foods with a higher FSAm-NPS score (lower nutritional quality) was associated with a higher mortality for all causes and for cancer and diseases of the circulatory, respiratory and digestive systems.”

EPIC is a massive cohort study, involving more than 521,000 adults whose health was followed for more than 17 years. Scientists determined that the data of more than half a million adults collected for cancer and nutritional research could be specifically examined to test the impact on mortality of their food choices.

A score was calculated for every 100 grams of food, which took into consideration the amount of sugars, saturated fatty acids, sodium, energy, fiber and protein in the food. The type of food (i.e. fruits, vegetables, legumes or nuts) also had an impact on the score.

The dietary index was then calculated for each participant for all foods consumed. The higher the score, the lower the overall nutritional quality of the diet.

Of the 501,594 adults considered, those with the higher score showed an increased risk of mortality. They scored an average of 760 in the FSAm-NPS dietary index, while those whose choices were healthier scored 661.

In a note commenting on the results, Hercberg, who is also a professor of nutritional epidemiology at Sorbonne Paris Nord University, said that the “results were largely unchanged after further analysis, suggesting that the findings withstand scrutiny.”

Critics of Nutri-Score argue that the system is too simplistic and does not take all of a food’s nutritional qualities into account.

For example, Italian opponents argue that extra virgin olive oil — one of the keystone ingredients of the Mediterranean diet – receives a ‘C’ from Nutri-Score, lower than other cooking oils since its antioxidant and polyphenol content are not taken into account by the algorithm.

However, Pilar Galan, a nutritional and epidemiological researcher at the Université Paris 13, rebuffed this argument in a tweet and said “the consumption of food which does not get good grades for its nutritional quality by Nutri-Score is associated with higher mortality.”

She also emphasized the relevance of the results due to the many socio-demographic factors taken into account and their impact on the lifestyle of the participants.

The authors concluded that their study supports “the relevance of FSAm-NPS to characterize healthier food choices in the context of public health policies (eg, Nutri-Score) for European populations.”

“This is important considering ongoing discussions about the potential implementation of a unique nutrition labelling system at the European Union level,” the authors concluded.

• British Medical Journal

Teresa Bellanova, the Italian Minister of Agriculture has been lobbying other E.U. governments on the issue and has called for the protection of foods that she hailed as “pillars of the Mediterranean diet.” Greece and Romania have lent their support to Italy’s stance.

At a recent meeting of agricultural leaders in Germany, Bellanova told ministers that the algorithms used to calculate Nutri-Score were “reductive” and could mislead consumers.

While France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands have agreed to voluntarily adopt Nutri-Score (along with many of Europe’s major food producers and retailers), the Italian Ministry of Economic Development presented its own alternative labeling system, the Nutrinform battery.

Both labeling systems are aimed at encouraging Europeans to eat more nutritious foods to improve health.

The Nutri-Score system has been hailed for its simplicity to implement as each foodstuff is simply awarded a color-coded letter. However, opponents have criticized it for oversimplifying the nutritious value of certain products and unfairly penalizing some foods which are widely consumed as part of the Mediterranean diet.

Back in August, the European Commission approved the implementation of Italy’s Nutrinform battery food labelling system, which gave Italian producers the go-ahead to place the Nutrinform labels on their food packaging. The move also implied that the Italian system would compete with the French-favored Nutri-Score to become the E.U.’s official food classification system.

Nutri-Score was designed to classify the nutritional profile of food and beverages with a simple color coded system that ranks foods on a scale from A to E. (A being the healthiest options and E being the least healthy.)

The Nutrinform concept was developed to make it easier for consumers to understand how a specific product can be consumed as part of a healthy diet. Rather than labelling any food as either good or bad, Nutrinform displays the nutritional value and energy intake of the product using a battery graphic.

However, a study recently published in the journal, Nutrients, found that the Nutri-Score label was more effective than the Nutrinform label as well as several others in helping consumers rank food items by nutritional quality.

• Food Navigator

The announcement comes days after the German government approved the introduction of the Nutri-Score labeling system. The WBAE said that, if adopted, its labeling requirements should be made mandatory for producers.

In the meantime, Nutri-Score will be adopted on a voluntary basis by producers and distributors in the country starting from next November.

The WBAE has now asked Berlin to raise the bar during the current German semester of E.U. presidency and propose the mandatory adoption of Nutri-Score, while adding to it a new concept: product sustainability.

In a press release, the WBAE emphasized the urgency of a “strategic reorientation and sustainable reinforcement of the entire food policy area to facilitate the necessary transformation of the food system and create a fair food and eating environment for all.”

According to the advisory board’s experts, current policies place “too much weight on consumers’ own responsibility for sustainable food choices.”

Achim Spiller, agricultural economist and co-chair of the report, wrote that “such a low-key approach to policy sends the wrong signal in a complex policy field that is heavily influenced by lobbying activities. What is required is a dedicated food and nutrition policy where the government takes a more prominent role.”

The WBAE argues that this process should be developed around a few core concepts: dedicated food information for young people, taxes on less sustainable food, such as sugar-sweetened beverages, the promotion of organic farming and the development of new, mandatory food labels.

The labels, the experts say, should not only offer easy-to-understand nutritional information but should also include a “climate label” related to the carbon footprint of the products as well as a “animal welfare” label for animal products.

On top of that, adverts for unhealthy foods targeting children should be restricted and the government should develop a “digital ecosystem for more sustainable food consumption,” the WBAE argued.

“Promoting more sustainable food choices across the whole spectrum of society requires a fair framework encompassing provision of solid and comprehensible information, easy access to healthy foods, more food choice options and price incentives which make sustainable choices financially more attractive for the consumer,” Britta Renner, co-author of the study, said.

The WBAE report added to the ongoing debate on food labeling that is taking place throughout the European Union.

Within the Food to Fork strategy announced in May by the European Commission, the E.U. is expected to adopt a unique comprehensive food labeling scheme.

The Commission said last June that a Europe-wide front-of-pack nutrition label could be introduced by 2022, after a wide and ample consultation and assessment of the food labels impact.

The debate, including the dispute about the adoption of the Italian Nutrinform Battery instead of Nutri-Score, did not fully address the sustainability aspects of food production and distribution until now.

• WBAE
• German Ministry of Agriculture and Food

The study compared five different FoPLs – Health Star Rating system, multiple traffic lights, Nutri-Score, reference intakes and warning symbol – to examine food choices and the consumers’ ability to understand the labels.

For the study, researchers asked a representative sample of 1,032 Italian consumers selected for age, gender, lifestyle and income to complete an online survey in which they were asked to select one food item from a group of three with different nutrient profiles that they would most likely purchase.

Afterwards, they were asked to rank the three food items by their nutritional quality, first without any label then with one of the five FoPLs.

The results of the study showed that while the FoPLs had limited impact on the food items chosen by consumers, the Nutri-Score system was most effective in aiding consumers to order the items by nutritional quality.

“All five FoPLs improved somewhat the nutritional quality of food choices compared to no label for some participants, with no significant differences across schemes,” the team of Italian and Australian researchers wrote. “However, Nutri-Score was the best format to help Italian consumers identify the nutritional quality of foods.”

“On the contrary, the reference intakes label, the format of which is very close to the new FoPL format being proposed by the Italian government, NutrInform, was the least efficient scheme to assist Italian consumers in interpreting the nutritional quality of foods,” the researchers added.

For the researchers, the performance of Nutri-Score did not come as a surprise, as their results proved to be consistent with previous studies conducted in several European countries.

“Notably, similar results were observed in Spain, another Mediterranean country with a similar food context and dietary behaviors as Italy,” the researchers wrote.

The choice of analyzing FoPL performance among Italian consumers comes as the European Union continues to debate which food labeling system to adopt.

While Nutri-Score is gaining traction in several countries within the E.U., Italy is the one European country that strongly opposes its introduction.

Local authorities and many in the food chain do not believe Nutri-Score adequately classifies the health benefits of many ingredients of the Mediterranean diet, especially extra virgin olive oil.

Italy is also pushing the E.U. to adopt the Nutrinform Battery instead of Nutri-Score.

“Although Italian stakeholders have raised criticisms against the Nutri-Score, to date no scientific comparative study has been published in Italy to test its effectiveness among consumers, in comparison to various FoPLs, such as the reference intakes, of which the Nutrinform Battery is a variant,” the researchers wrote.

• Nutrients

The system, which was developed in 2017 and has since been adopted in seven other European countries, gives food items a grade from A to E, based on their nutrient profiles.

“The goal is to enable consumers to compare the nutritional quality of foods,” Serge Hercberg, a professor of nutrition at the University of Paris and head of the team that devised Nutri-score, told Olive Oil Times.

“Nutri-score uses the computation of a nutrient profiling system taking into account nutrient content per 100 grams for food and beverages,” he added. “It allocates bad points according to the content of critical concern, unfavorable nutrients: sugar, saturated fatty acids and sodium. Good points are allocated for the content of fruits, vegetables and nuts, fibers, proteins and olive, rapeseed and nuts oils.”

Nutri-score grades extra virgin olive oil with a C, which has drawn criticism from Coldiretti, the major Italian agricultural association. However, Hercberg said the rating should not come as a surprise.

“[The C for olive oil is] the best score possible for added fats and even for vegetable oils,” he said. “The public health recommendations do not suggest consuming olive oil without limits, but they encourage consumers to favor it over other vegetable oils and especially over animal fats.”

As more countries opt to implement the Nutri-score scheme, private companies have followed suit.

Food giant Nestlé has said they will adopt Nutri-score on their food packages throughout southern Europe.

“With Spain and Portugal, we will now have 7,500 Nestlé products featuring Nutri-score across the continent,” Marco Settembri, Nestlé CEO for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, said. “Further studies have confirmed what we believe: Nutri-score works with consumers in Europe and has the potential to become the European Union-wide system.”

Coldiretti responded that Nestlé’s decision to further implement Nutri-score on its products is “untimely and wrong.”

Ettore Prandini, the association’s president, said the decision “seeks to affect the ongoing debate in the E.U.” about the eventual introduction of a common food labeling system designed to combat obesity and promote better eating habits.

“[Nutri-score] is misleading, discriminatory and incomplete,” he said. “Its paradox is to penalize healthy and natural food while favoring artificial products whose true contents are in some cases unknown.”

“We risk the promotion of junk food with sweeteners instead of sugar in it, while blocking life-saving food such as the extra virgin olive oil, considered the signature product of the Mediterranean diet,” he added. “Nutritional balance is a result of differentiated daily food intake, certainly not of a specific product by itself.”

However, Hercberg has heard these arguments before and said special interest groups would oppose any type of system aimed at grading foods based on their nutritional content.

“Six years ago, when… I proposed the idea of a summarized, graded five-colors front-of-pack label to inform consumers about the nutritional quality of foods, we had an immediate general outcry from economic operators,” he said. “Almost everything was done by powerful lobbies to prevent the implementation of this public health measure.”

Hercberg said that Nutri-score is based on a solid foundation of scientific research.

“More than 40 studies published in international peer-reviewed journals have validated the algorithm underlying its computation,” he said.

The Parisian researcher added that the system is meant as a comparison of foods that are in the same category (i.e. for extra virgin olive oil and butter). He argued it would help consumers compare similar offerings – such as two options from different brands or two types of foods that are prepared in similar manners – to decide what was best for them.

Hercberg is not alone in his advocacy for the system either.

Citing the support that Nutri-score has gathered within the World Health Organization since its introduction, the Spanish Authority on Food Safety and Nutrition said it will adopt Nutri-score as part of a multifaceted strategy to help consumers adopt healthier eating habits.

France also has adopted the system with enthusiasm and may incorporate aspects of it into tax law. A few weeks ago, the Senate advanced a legislative proposal that, if adopted, would require products labelled D or E to pay a special tax.

In 2019, German authorities also scrapped plans to legislate their own food labeling system in favor of implementing Nutri-score.

The E.U. itself has hinted that the debate could soon be over.

During the European Parliament’s last meeting of the commission on environment, public health and food safety, Alexandra Nikolakopoulou, a member of the food safety office of the European Commission, said the E.U. must promote a “sustainable food system.”

He added that this would require the adoption of the labelling system with the goal to make its introduction mandatory for the member states within the next two years.

While the Commission has not yet officially proposed such a controversial measure, the idea was unsurprisingly met with skepticism in Italy.

“That is absurd,” Prandini told the Italian newspaper Il Giornale. “The idea is to penalize Italy, which along with Japan is one of the countries in the world with the highest life expectancy, while rewarding the model of countries where obesity is widespread.”

Prandini also said the introduction of a labelling system in the United Kingdom meant a loss of at least 30 percent for the Italian olive oil market there.

“Lost in favor of oils that are in no way comparable to extra virgin olive oil,” he said. (Rapeseed oil and walnut oil are also graded with a C by Nutri-score, while soya, sunflower and corn oils are all graded as a D, with butter receiving an E.)

Italy has asked its European partners supporting Nutri-score at least not to adopt it for products with a Protected Designation of Origin, specialties that are an essential part of a high-quality and traditional diet.

The Italian government is also working to promote an alternative labeling system it has dubbed, Nutrinform Battery, a “battery indicator” that alerts the consumer about the nutritional value of the packaged food, focusing on calories, fats, sugar and salt for single serving.

Italian government officials, including the Minister of Agriculture, Teresa Bellanova, have also emphasized that any type of labeling program must not be unilaterally imposed on member states.

However, Italian producers and government officials are already swimming against a strong current. Hercbeg said that Nutri-score has proven to be effective and popular in countries where it had already been adopted.

“We have results of several studies performed in real conditions showing that the Nutri-score label led to a significant improvement of the overall nutritional quality of food purchases,” Hercberg said.

“On the other hand, a study on acceptance by consumers has shown that 91 percent of French people support the Nutri-score logo present on food packages; 91 percent consider it easy to understand; 70 percent have a better image of the brands displaying Nutri-score and 87 percent believe that Nutri-score should be mandatory,” he added.

• Coldiretti
• Il Giornale
• Food Navigator