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.

The Romanian government announced the adoption of Nutri-Score after concluding a public consultation on the new rules for introducing the FOPL.

The decision brings an end to years of uncertainty about the country’s position on Nutri-Score adoption.

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

All Nutri-Score adopters in Romania will act voluntarily. Still, as in other countries adopting Nutri-Score, Romanian regulations require producers who choose to use Nutri-Score on one product to apply it to all products under the same brand within 24 to 36 months, depending on the number of products.

Romanian food producers and retailers will be required to follow the procedures and rules established by Santé Publique France (the French National Public Health Agency), including graphic standards and usage protocols.

Operators who fail to comply with the rules (e.g., providing incorrect nutritional data, misusing the logo) may have their rights revoked, face audits or be subject to sanctions or legal action.

The rules harmonize the use of Nutri-Score across all adopting countries. Alongside France and now Romania, the list includes Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal.

According to the international food product database Open Food Facts, which contributed to the design of the Nutri-Score label, the FOPL now appears in thousands of supermarkets and retail chains.

In countries where Nutri-Score has not been officially adopted—such as Slovenia, Austria, and Ukraine—some producers and retailers have voluntarily begun displaying it on part or all of their food packaging.

While the number of adopting countries continues to grow, Nutri-Score remains controversial in several parts of Europe.

Government and institutional officials in Italy, Greece, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Latvia have repeatedly opposed Nutri-Score.

Despite significant differences in how their concerns are expressed, these countries share the belief that Nutri-Score parameters penalize local food specialties or products widely recognized as healthy when consumed in appropriate portions.

Olive oil has long been at the center of the heated European FOPL debate.

While the latest update to the Nutri-Score algorithm raised all grades of olive oil to a “Light-green B,” Nutri-Score founder Serge Hercberg has clarified that olive oil will never receive the highest rating due to its total fat content.

As a result of this debate, Spain has introduced Nutri-Score, and at the same time, it has exempted olive oil producers and distributors from labeling their packaging with the FOPL.

After Nutri-Score was updated, several large food producers began distancing themselves from the logo, starting with the French-based food corporation Danone. More recently, the Swiss giant Nestlé also announced its intention to drop the label from some products in Switzerland.

For a few years, Nutri-Score has been the front-runner of an expected decision by the European Commission on the introduction of a mandatory FOPL across the European Union. The process was stalled in Brussels as the issue was dropped as a legislative priority.

The new European Commission, which formed last autumn, showed no intention to pursue a harmonized FOPL.

The new Romanian decision will become effective 60 days after its publication in the country’s official gazette.

After becoming one of the first major companies to adopt Nutri-Score in 2019, the Swiss multinational food and beverage producer is dropping the traffic-light style nutritional label on some confectionery and drink brands.

A Nestlé spokesperson said the company was removing Nutri-Score from products whose direct competitors were not using the label.

“Support for this nutritional labelling has significantly decreased in the country, and today Nestlé’s local Swiss brands are often the only ones carrying Nutri-Score in the product categories they are present in,” a spokesperson told Just Food.

Instead, the company will print a QR code on the food packaging labels to provide additional information about ingredients and nutritional values.

The announcement comes one month after Swiss supermarket chain Migros abandoned Nutri-Score, citing limited customer benefits despite the high implementation costs.

Previously, rival food manufacturer Danone announced it would drop Nutri-Score labels on many of its products after a change to the algorithm, which resulted in lower scores for several of its products.

Running counter to the trend, French supermarket chain Carrefour would require Nutri-Score labels from its suppliers and calculate its ratings for brands that do not comply. 

The decisions of the supermarket chain and food manufacturers highlight a collective action problem facing Nutri-Score, exemplified by Nestlé’s statement that it still supported the labeling system and would leave it in place on some products in the Swiss market and other markets.

“This decision is specific to the Swiss market and does not affect Nestlé’s support for Nutri-Score in other European countries,” the spokesperson said. “Nestlé continues to support and implement Nutri-Score in other European countries where governments are favorable to this nutritional labelling.”

“The low adoption of Nutri-Score in Switzerland, combined with decreased political support, creates a situation where Nutri-Score can no longer effectively fulfil its primary role of enabling consumers to compare the nutritional value of products within the same category,” the spokesperson added.

Nutri-Score is applied voluntarily in nine European Union countries and Switzerland, but is widely opposed in seven other EU states.

The European Union prohibits member countries from unilaterally implementing a food labeling system. Instead, Nutri-Score had been widely rumored to be the front-runner for a European-wide food label until the commission announced it would delay its plans to adopt a single food labeling system in 2023.

Priorities have since changed in Brussels after the European election in 2024, with some de-emphasis on food labeling from the commission.

The loss of momentum comes despite support from scientists and public health groups who argue that Nutri-Score has “demonstrated its effectiveness.” However, other researchers question the reliability of some studies that have led to this conclusion.

While the Spanish government has recommended the use of Nutri-Score, the food labeling system is vociferously opposed in Italy and Greece. 

The countries’ agricultural associations are concerned about the lower scores for traditional food products, including the ‘Light-green B’ for all grades of olive oil.

Olive oil producers argue that extra virgin olive oil should receive a ‘Green A,’ the highest score, due to its polyphenol content, which is not currently considered by the Nutri-Score algorithm. 

However, Nutri-Score creator Serge Herberg told Olive Oil Times in a 2023 interview that olive oil could never receive a ‘Green A’ because of its fat content.

“I wonder, is it the economic sector that decides how to classify a product, or is it the scientists?” he questioned.

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This measure made France the latest country to adopt the updated front-of-pack labeling system (FoPL). It took nearly two years of heated debate to secure its approval.

Interestingly, while announcing the decree, Genevard and her colleagues warned that the FoPL “has limitations that it is essential to correct.”

According to the ministers, Nutri-Score penalizes many French specialty foods “although they offer recognized nutritional benefits when consumed according to nutritional guidelines… and as part of a balanced, varied diet.”

“Those foods have earned quality labels on their packages. It is imperative that we protect our culinary heritage,” they remarked.

The ministers emphasized that they will actively work to prevent any harm “for products that are the result of the richness of our terroirs.”

Some notable French specialty food producers, such as cheesemakers, have criticized Nutri-Score since its inception. They voiced even stronger objections after the announcement of the new algorithm.

The French ministers’ concerns closely mirror some of the most significant arguments raised against Nutri-Score’s adoption in other European countries, including Italy.

Nutri-Score is a traffic-light-style FoPL that uses five coordinated colors and letters to rate how healthy a packaged food is 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 nutritious.

The update introduces substantial changes, including an improved rating for olive oils. These changes have upgraded all grades of olive oil from “Yellow C” to “Light Green B.”

The updated algorithm makes no distinction between refined olive oil and extra virgin olive oil. This occurs because Nutri-Score does not explicitly consider phenols and other relevant content.

Although these compounds significantly contribute to extra virgin olive oil’s reputation as a healthy superfood, its high-fat content prevented it from achieving the top Nutri-Score rating.

Other foods, such as whole milk, have been downgraded under the new algorithm due to their fat content.

The update has also resulted in lower ratings for several popular products, including those containing alternative sweeteners.

The significant revision of the algorithm prompted the Danone food corporation, an early Nutri-Score adopter, to harshly criticize the system and withdraw its use from a wide range of its products.

While signing the decree, the French ministers emphasized that combating the country’s obesity epidemic remains the primary goal of the new measure.

“One in two French people are overweight or obese today, with very strong social and territorial inequalities,” they noted.

The ministers praised the changes made by food producers to their products to better align with Nutri-Score ratings, “particularly by reducing salt, sugar and fat content.”

Six countries in Europe currently use Nutri-Score: Germany, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

Portugal briefly joined the list last April. However, two months later, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries announced that its deployment was de facto illegal and canceled the entire adoption process.

At the time, the Portuguese ministry stressed that any voluntary labeling system in Portugal must rely on models “respectful of Portuguese food products.”

In their announcement, the French ministries specified that “economic actors involved in the process, if they wish, have two years to update their packaging and affix the new Nutri-Score.”

Following the latest update to the Nutri-Score algorithm, the French food corporation is removing the FOPL from its drinkable dairy and plant-based products.

The traffic-light-style FOPL 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 nutritious.

The new version of Nutri-Score reclassified drinkable dairy and plant-based products from the general food category to the beverage category.

This change affected the products’ ratings, as the algorithm applies different metrics depending on the category in which the foods are listed.

In this category, products like whole milk were downgraded from “B” to “C” due to their fat content.

After the switch, the ratings of some of those products dropped from “A” or “B” to as low as “D” or “E,” depending on the sugar content or the nutritional impact of alternative sweeteners.

Nutri-Score metrics also consider the function: while solid yogurt is classified as a food typically eaten during meals, drinkable yogurt is categorized as a beverage, assumed to be consumed outside of meals.

Water is the only drink in the beverage category that maintains a “Green A” classification.

“We do not agree with the revision of the algorithm,” Danone told Olive Oil Times. “This development gives an erroneous view of the nutritional and functional quality of drinkable dairy and plant-based products, not in line with food-based dietary guidelines in Europe.”

Danone is removing Nutri-Score information from several popular brands, such as Actimel, High Pro, Danino, Danone and Activia.

Nutri-Score promoters strongly disagreed with the company’s decision.

“The sugar content of these beverages – drinkable yogurts, sweetened milk drinks (flavored milk) and plant-based drinks (including soy, almond, oat, rice, etc.) – varies considerably between sugar-free and very sweet versions of the product,” Nutri-Score’s organizers wrote in a blog post.

“Some of these products may contain 10 to 13 grams of sugar per 100 mililiters (i.e., the same level as sodas) but were abnormally classified as ‘A’ or ‘B’ with the calculation method for general foods that were initially used,” they added.

Danone’s approach to Nutri-Score may continue to evolve.

“We are also studying the impact of this withdrawal on our other product references and are working with all stakeholders in each market where we operate to identify the best solution,” the company said.

The Nutri-Score update was announced last year following a two-year review by the scientific committee overseeing the FOPL.

Among the many products affected, the review also upgraded all olive oils from “Yellow C” to “Light green B.”

The FOPL’s promoters emphasized that periodic algorithm revisions were planned and anticipated since its debut.

“A nutritional logo, whatever it might be, must be revised regularly based on scientific progress… market developments… experience of its implementation,” they wrote.

While distancing itself from Nutri-Score, Danone also called for the adoption in the European Union of “a harmonized interpretative nutritional information system benefiting all European consumers.”

Nutri-Score has been adopted in six E.U. countries (France, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal) and Switzerland.

These implementations are voluntary, meaning that food producers can freely choose whether to apply the logo on their packages.

Several countries oppose the introduction of Nutri-Score as an E.U.-wide FOPL, and last year, the Romanian consumer watchdog formally forbade food producers from displaying the French FOPL on their packages.

Two years ago, Italian Antitrust authorities prohibited the use of French-origin FOPL on various types of food.

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The program aims to assure Australian consumers that products sold on the market are labeled correctly and free from defects. This program will last three years and involve sample tastings and analysis of product labeling.

“We run this program every few years just to check what the olive oil is, making sure it complies with Australian standards,” Michael Southan, the AOA chief executive, told Olive Oil Times.

“There is no specific issue today as we run the program,” he added. “The fact that it happens at a time when there is a global shortage of the product is just a coincidence. We ran a similar program in 2017.”

“We believe it’s very important that consumers have the utmost confidence that what they’re buying is as it says on the label and nothing else,” Southan continued.

Reassuring consumers is crucial when olive oil prices at origin have reached historic highs in the past four months, and families might be tempted to switch to other edible oils.

“With these controls in place in the market, consumers will be able to recognize the value of olive oil and continue to choose it,” Southan said.

According to the AOA, consumers’ primary concern is rising prices rather than quality.

“The main challenge for Australia could be the dwindling supply of imported olive oil due to the global shortage,” Southan said. “We typically expect at least half of our consumption to come from imports.”

With these supply and demand issues, olive oil prices have risen. “Consequently, people are becoming more inquisitive about what is happening with olive oil globally, hence their heightened interest,” Southan said.

“However, this project was initially conceived as being separate from any pressing issues we were aware of and even predates the initial stages of any increase in olive oil costs,” he added.

Australia is one of the largest olive oil-producing countries outside the Mediterranean basin, and domestic consumption has grown considerably over the past few decades.

According to the International Olive Council (IOC), Australian growers produce approximately 20,000 tons of olive oil annually.

Data from the IOC also indicates a notable increase in olive oil consumption, rising from 13,500 tons in the 1990/91 crop year to 44,000 tons two decades later. In 2023/24, the IOC forecasts total olive oil consumption to reach 53,000 tons.

The rising popularity of extra virgin olive oil and awareness of its health benefits have created opportunities throughout the olive product chain.

“Consumer awareness is continually growing,” Southan said. “Consider the chefs who increasingly advocate for the use of extra virgin olive oil. I believe that people are becoming more cognizant of the health advantages of extra virgin olive oils.”

He added, “It is becoming the preferred choice, as its health benefits are complemented by its outstanding flavor.”

AOA’s program will take samples from the entire supply chain, including locally produced and imported olive oils.

AOA will source samples from supermarkets, food distributors, wholesalers and small growers that sell through boutique retail outlets or farmers markets. Checks will also be run on those who sell online through their websites and countrywide.

“Our focus will be on verifying the quality of these oils and ensuring their compliance with labeling standards,” said Southan, referencing the stringent Australian labeling regulations prohibiting product content misrepresentation.

“This also applies to products that claim to meet Australian standards through certification,” he added. “We will verify that they indeed comply.”

Olive oil samples and labels from all states and territories in the country will be checked randomly by the program.

“Because the project spans three years, we’re not just looking at this year’s harvest or last year’s harvest; we’re looking at next year’s harvest and the year after,” Southan said. The objective is to monitor the supply system over the next few years. If we identify any issues, we plan to collaborate with producers or importers to rectify them.”

“We aim to cooperate closely with them,” he concluded. “That’s the reason we have been publicizing the program. If an issue is discovered, or if something has gone awry, it could be something the concerned company is unaware of.”

The Swiss Council of States, one of the two branches of the parliament, has approved a motion of the Commission for Science, Education and Culture asking representatives to consider the potential negative outcome of Nutri-Score’s adoption.

According to the motion, a healthy diet requires a broad approach to eating and can not rely on scores assigned to single food packages.

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.

Benedikt Würth, the commission’s representative at the council, told his colleagues that Nutri-Score has several flaws, including the fact that it does not discriminate between ultra-processed and non-processed foods.

Würth added that Nutri-Score does not consider additives, the product’s origin or sustainability.

As a result, Würth said traditional Swiss products, such as cheese, are penalized for their high-fat content, while an ultra-processed alternative may receive a higher score.

Given the endorsement of the motion by the majority of the chamber’s representatives, the motion will soon be discussed at a national level.

The Swiss Federal Council, the national government, sided against the motion underlining that Nutri-Score is voluntary for producers and retailers and does not represent the national nutritional guidelines.

Swiss President Alain Berset warned that should the parliament approve such a position, the country’s adaptation of Nutri-Score might have to be revoked.

Berset’s warning comes a month after the Romanian government banned Nutri-Score.

According to Tassos Kyriakides, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health, the fact that Nutri-Score does not consider food additives and their impact on health is just “one of its flaws.”

“I agree with providing the consumer a clear and concise information on a label,” Kyriakides told Olive Oil Times.

“The problem arises when you apply that across the board for every product, every food, every nutrient, without understanding that it is not just about the calories,” he added. “[The label] should concern the context of how [a specific food] is used.”

“Take a soft drink, one with no calories, as there is no sugar,” Kyriakides continued. “The context is how much you consume of that and what implications it has for your health.”

The Yale professor, among the organizers of the International Yale Symposium on Olive Oil and Health, noted that different labels could be applied to different food to be efficient in helping consumers.

“Take olive oil, with its unique characteristics,” Kyriakides said. “A [vegetable] oils dedicated labeling could help consumers choose among such oils. With Nutri-Score, they must compare olive oil to a soft drink.”

Nutri-Score founder Serge Hercberg explained how the rating system supports consumers’ choices within food categories.

In a 2020 Olive Oil Times interview, he argued that the labels help consumers compare two or more similar offerings.

However, Kyriakides said Hercberg’s argument in favor of Nutri-Score is not as straightforward as it sounds.

“If consumers who do not know about olive oil are exposed to the Nutri-Score labels, they can well think that a soda drink would be healthier than olive oils,” he said.

With the last update to the Nutri-Score algorithm, olive oils are now classified as “Light-green B” instead of “Yellow C.” In a recent statement, Hercberg clarified that olive oil will never get a “Green A” as it is a fat.

That means that 100 milliliters of olive oil cannot qualify for a Green A. Hercberg noted that such a rating does not reduce the proven health benefits of olive oil.

“If the intent is to inform the consumers about healthy choices, then [not labeling it as a Green A] means that you just ignored a big component of what olive oil brings,” Kyriakides said.

The Yale professor also noted how all olive oils are rated “Light green B” by Nutri-Score, meaning the algorithm underlying the FOPL does not consider the bioactive compounds that differentiate that make extra virgin olive oil stand out from all the other grades of olive oil.

“With its rating for olive oil, Nutri-Score is not helping the Mediterranean diet,” Kyriakides said. “People who turn to the MedDiet because they heard that it is healthy soon learn that olive oil sits at its core as a healthy superfood. Then they go in a store and see that it gets maybe a B or more probably a C.”

“The question is the context: how are you consuming [a food such as olive oil]? What are you consuming with that? How did it come to be part of [such consumption]?” Kyriakides added.

“Take olive oil and frying,” he continued. “We know that if you fry your veggies with extra virgin olive oil, compared to any other olive oil, you will absorb nutrients much better. There is synergy there.”

“You have to talk about that synergy, not the stand-alone products,” Kyriakides said. “If you are driven by calories, you miss all of these interactions, and there are many more examples of that.”

“In the intent to create an easy labeling for food products, this is actually creating more confusion,” he added.

Nutri-Score researchers have long argued that the FOPL does not harm the Mediterranean diet.

In a 2022 interview, Hercberg praised the Mediterranean diet and told Olive Oil Times, “the Mediterranean diet favors olive oil among added fats but does not recommend its consumption ad libitum.”

“The Mediterranean diet does not, therefore, under any circumstances… promote cheeses and processed meats,” Hercberg said.

However, Italians disagree. At the forefront of the opposition to the possible introduction of Nutri-Score at a European level, Italian farming associations, food producers and local and national governments have repeatedly criticized the French FOPL.

Recently, the Italian Minister of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry, Francesco Lollobrigida, said Nutri-Score falls short of warning against Italian food products.

In his words, the FOPL does not differentiate quality products. Instead, it “guides and influences [the consumers] in the name of algorithms towards some productions that have little to do with natural processes.”

His words came on the heels of a statement of the Italian farming association Coldiretti according to which the FOPL “only focuses on a very limited variety of nutritional substances (such as sugar, fat or salt) and the energy intake without considering the portions, paradoxically excluding from the diet 85 percent of Made in Italy quality products.”

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The commission estimates that more than 230 labels purportedly allow consumers to compare the environmental impact of everything they buy. However, critics say many labels are based on weak verification systems, enabling large-scale greenwashing.

Now, the European Commission has proposed two measures to limit which schemes may be introduced into the market and block others entirely.

The first says that new eco-labels created by private companies must show higher environmental ambition than existing eco-labels to receive approval from member state governments.

The second bans eco-labels introduced by national or regional public entities, except for public schemes developed at the European Union level. The commission is already working on its own sustainable food label.

The commission arrived at its conclusions after an investigation of 232 existing eco-labels found that more than half of the labels either had weak verification methods to check whether food products were as sustainable as the labels claimed or none at all.

Commission investigators also said that many eco-labels were confusing, with some relying on self-certification from the companies producing the food without explicitly saying so.

However, critics of the European Commission’s new rules said it might stifle innovation and lead consumers to distrust all eco-labels, including the most legitimate ones that follow best practices.

Before either Green Claims Directives become law, they must first be approved by the European Parliament and Council of the European Union.

The decision for more strict regulation of eco-labels comes as the commission also introduces plans to eliminate vague, misleading and unsubstantiated environmental claims from food packaging.

According to Frans Timmermans, the commission’s first vice president and executive vice president for the European Green Deal, claims such as ‘bee-friendly juices’ or ‘carbon-neutral bananas’ are made with “no evidence or justification whatsoever.”

He said this allows large companies with complex supply chains to muddy the waters while disadvantaging companies that produce sustainable products.

“Many Europeans want to contribute to a more sustainable world through their purchases,” he said. “They need to be able to trust the claims made. With his proposal, we give consumers the reassurance that when something is sold as green, it is actually green.”

A separate commission investigation from 2020 found that 53 percent of examined environmental claims from food products across the European Union were vague, misleading or unfounded. Forty percent of the claims were unsubstantiated.

The European Consumer Organization has welcomed the commission’s moves to crack down on greenwashing through food labeling.

“Preventing the problem instead of correcting it once the harm is done is an innovative move which will benefit consumers, who want to act sustainably and need reliable information to do so,” said Monique Goyens, the organization’s director general.

“Authorities will have to heavily fine companies to clean up the market from misleading green claims and labels once and for all,” she concluded.

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According to legal documents presented before the Paris Court of Justice, producers asked the court to terminate the environmental labeling of food products. They consider it “unfair to organic production and deceptive for consumers.”

The lawsuit challenges the French Agency for Ecological Transition (Ademe), Open Food Facts, which operates the Eco-Score platform, and several companies actively involved in Eco-Score promotion and implementation.

In a note, IFOAM explained that the Eco-Score labels, in its view, represent a violation of the E.U.’s regulations on organic product labeling.

More specifically, marking foods with an “Eco” label “is considered likely to create confusion among consumers (…)” when it comes to distinguishing food produced by conventional means and organic food. Such labeling constitutes “a misleading commercial practice,” the association wrote. Most organic products sold within the E.U. use specific labels, such as “Bio.”

The lawsuit also expresses concerns over the methodology governing the Eco-Score rating system, which is based on the Agribalyse database and Ademe’s Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which, “like the PEF (Product Environmental Footprint) [is a] methodology recently questioned by the European Commission in the context of the draft Directive on green claims,” IFOAM stated.

According to IFOAM, the Eco-Score labels do not consider all aspects of a food’s production to determine its rating and end up favoring “intensive and conventional production rather than a transition of production systems towards processes that respect the environment and biodiversity.”

On top of that, IFOAM claimed that the labels do not “provide consumers with relevant information on the environmental impacts of food products.”

Eco-Score is a color/letter labeling system that rates food from the most ecologically friendly, “Green A,” to the least environmentally friendly, “Red E.” Its ratings are determined by a series of factors, including production and territory, logistics and transport, packaging, seasonality and more. The goal is to raise consumer awareness about the ecological impact of the food they are buying.

Eco-Score gives most extra virgin olive oil packaged in glass bottles a rating of “Yellow C.”

These results place glass-bottled EVOOs a step below butter-based processed snacks packaged in plastic, often given a “B” rating. The EVOOs have also been rated two steps below frozen French fries, which receive the top rating.

“Instead of fighting greenwashing, labeling schemes like the Eco-score contribute to it (…),” Jan Plagge, IFOAM Organic Europe president, wrote in a press note.

Jacques Caplat, president of the IFOAM French Members association, added that “in an already difficult context of inflation for producers and consumers, attacks on organic farming, whether linked to the use of misleading terms or biased methodologies, must be stopped. Terms that are only allowed on organic food products by E.U. regulations should not be used for other purposes, and certainly not on food products that are not very environmentally friendly as is currently the case with the Eco-Score.”

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Serge Hercberg, a French nutritionist at Sorbonne Paris North University, told the Spanish news agency EFE that since the only macronutrient present in olive oil is fat, it would be impossible for it to receive an “A” grade.

However, he added that this does not diminish olive oil’s importance to human health or the Mediterranean diet.

Hercberg indicated that the heart-healthy nature of olive oil’s monounsaturated fats was the main reason why all categories of olive oil will be upgraded from the “Yellow C” to the “Light-green B” when the algorithm underpinning the FOPL system is updated this year.

“I read a lot in the Spanish press that the olive oil sector wants the A rating,” he told EFE. “I wonder, is it the economic sector that decides how to classify a product, or is it the scientists? Tomorrow Coca-Cola will say that it wants an A or a B and Nutella from the Ferrero group that it wants a better evaluation.”

José Penco, director of the Spanish Association of Olive Municipalities (AEMO), was quick to retort: “it is not acceptable to compare olive oil with Coca-Cola or Nutella nutritionally. Furthermore, we find it impossible to believe that this phrase was pronounced by a scientist.”

In a comment published on LinkedIn, Penco added that the request for olive oil to be rated as a “Green A” should not be considered a request of the olive oil sector.

“It is not the economic sector that decides or proposes how to classify extra virgin olive oil; it is the multitude of studies and clinical trials published that show that extra virgin olive oil is the healthiest among all known fats,” Penco wrote.

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 Euroactiv, Hercberg said Nutri-Score labels could not provide consumers with all possible health and nutritional information about any single food item.

For example, Nutri-Score does not indicate whether foods are ultra-processed, contain pesticides or where the food was grown or produced.

Additionally, Nutri-Score does not recommend serving sizes of the labeled product. Still, Hercberg said that Nutri-Score is currently the most efficient labeling system.

“We are not able to add all these elements in a single label,” he said. “You must accept the idea that segmented and complementary information should be given.”

Penco said these types of statements from Hercberg galvanize the olive oil sector to continue lobbying against the widespread introduction of Nutri-Score.

“We are proud of the work we have done to halt the proposed front-of-pack Nutri-Score labels, even more so when we read such statements,” he said.

Nutri-Score is currently among the FOPL systems being studied by the European Commission ahead of its much-delayed plans to introduce a mandatory pan-European food label, which is not expected before 2024.

• EFE

The latest news was announced by a European Parliament member (MEP) during the national meeting of Coldiretti, an agricultural association, in Rome.

“The European Commission has canceled its legislative proposal for an E.U.-wide food labeling system which includes Nutri-Score as one of the potential candidates,” said Paolo De Castro, member of the agricultural and rural development commission of the European Parliament.

According to De Castro, the withdrawal from the agenda means that the matter will not be discussed again before 2024, when elections are due.

“This means that this commission and this parliament will not be able to propose or to turn any proposed food label into law,” he added.

The delay in the legislative process for a harmonized and mandatory food labeling system for the entire European Union does not come as a surprise after comments from Italian and European politicians last month.

A decision on the matter was first expected by the end of the year and was recently postponed to the second half of 2023 . The main reason for the delay resulted from significant differences among E.U. members in the approach to food labeling.

While several different labeling platforms have been taken into consideration, Nutri-Score was long considered to be the front-runner after widespread voluntary adoption by a handful of countries, including France and Germany and major food producers.

Nutri-Score is a traffic-light-style front-of-pack label 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.

The announcement from De Castro comes days after the advisory body of the French Ministry of Health, the National Conference on Health (CNS), published an opinion asking for the immediate adoption of Nutri-Score throughout Europe.

The CNS experts called on the European Commission and the European Parliament “to protect the health of people living in the European Union, present and future generations, and to adopt a mandatory nutritional labeling, that is understandable by as many of our citizens as possible, especially the most vulnerable, and that has been scientifically proven to be effective.”

The CNS added that Nutri-Score’s adoption should happen “by the foreseen deadline (2022)” as “mandatory Europe-wide nutrition labeling.”

Before the CNS released its opinion, 23 MEPs wrote an open letter to the European Commission, appearing to criticize Nutri-Score while asking for a different approach.

According to the signatories, whichever nutritional label is chosen should be “simple” but not “simplistic.” It should also have to avoid any “judgment of value of the foods” and offer “information on calories and nutrients per serving.”

The letter also asked the commission to consider how the label assesses non-nutritional contents, such as whether or not a food is processed.

According to De Castro, the de facto delay in the E.U. adoption process is good news, as it will allow more time to understand the different opinions on the subject.

“As a matter of fact, I do not think we need a single harmonized system,” he added. “There are so many cultural differences and different lifestyles to find a comprehensive system to include them all successfully.”

• Il Sole 24 Ore
• Ansa
• Nutri-Score

The two documents approved a few months ago and recently published in the Official Journal of the E.U. primarily integrate previous regulations to improve efficiency.

The European Commission explained that the need for a comprehensive update comes from “the experience acquired over the last decade [which] shows that certain aspects of the regulatory framework need to be simplified and clarified.”

The correct adoption of olive oil classification methods and the truthful labeling for olive oil are among the main items covered by the Delegated Regulation 2022/2104 and the Implementing Regulation 2022/2105.

As they introduced the regulation, the European Commission said compliance and conformity checks are necessary.

The commission noted how olive oil quality, explicitly regarding organoleptic and chemical profiles, set it apart from other vegetable and seed oils. It added that the product’s unique qualities make the need to prevent fraud especially poignant in the sector.

According to the commission, olive oil profiles must be analyzed using the protocols developed by the International Olive Council, of which the E.U. is a member. The IOC’s protocols require forming panels of selected and trained tasters.

“To ensure uniformity in the implementation, minimum requirements for the approval of panels should be set out,” the commission wrote. “In view of the difficulties that some member states encounter in setting up tasting panels, the use of panels in other member states should be authorized.”

Other crucial areas where the regulations integrate the previous rules include labeling. The commission’s goal is to mandate labels that are highly visible, easy to read and contain all the necessary information about the product’s contents.

The label should also inform consumers about the storage conditions of the product, as “numerous scientific studies have demonstrated that light and heat adversely affect the quality of olive oil.”

“The labeling regulations are meant to ensure that adequate and correct information on the product enables the consumer to choose,” Roberta Capecci and Roberto Ciancio, officials at the Italian central inspectorate of quality protection and fraud prevention of agri-food products (ICQRF), told Olive Oil Times.

“Sometimes markers use messages that attract the attention of the consumer, emphasizing product characteristics not covered by the… rules and which may not comply with E.U. and national provisions,” they added.

“Labeling, therefore, is the meeting point of two different needs: that of the producer, who wants to adequately promote his or her olive oil by differentiating it from others, and that of the consumers, who want to know exactly what they are buying,” Capecci and Ciancio continued.

Current European food safety regulations prohibit misleading information on labels regarding quality, production process or food origin.

“When it comes to the olive oil sector, the E.U. regulation… now implemented in regulation 2022/2014 provides for more specific rules related to olive oil origin, the procedures concerning the supply of certain mandatory details, the rules governing the optional particulars concerning the method of production, such as cold-pressed, extract/first pressing and for the chemical and organoleptic characteristics of the oil and the harvest year,” Capecci and Ciancio said.

The commission wrote that labels should always inform the consumer of the product’s origin, including whether it is a blend of olives or olive oils from different regions or countries.

If the olive harvest and olive transformation took place in different countries, that information would have to be mentioned on the label, with few exceptions.

“As a result of agricultural traditions and local extraction and blending practices, directly marketable virgin olive oils may be of quite different taste and quality depending on their place of origin,” the commission wrote.

“This may result in price differences within the same category that disturb the market,” it added. “There are no substantial differences linked to origin in other categories of edible olive oil, and so indicating the place of origin on the packaging of such oil may lead consumers to believe that quality differences do exist.”

The only highly-specific regional indications allowed on labels are related to PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) and PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) certifications. All other products must be labeled according to the country of origin, not its regions or provinces.

“When it comes to extra virgin olive oils, the origin is a mandatory indication,” Capecci and Ciancio said. “When an olive oil is identified on the label as Italian, it means that it has been produced in Italy only using Italian olives.”

Still, it is not unusual to find labels that only partially comply with the current regulations. In the ICQRF’s experience, this mostly happens when the indication of origin is involved.

“To promote their product, sometimes the producer includes not only the national origin of the oil but also the specific regional, provincial or municipal origin of the olives,” Capecci and Ciancio said.

“In such a case, the operator will be fined, and if the origin of those olives is found to be not the one stated on the labels, then the whole thing becomes fraud in the exercise of trade which belongs to the criminal sphere,” they added.

European labeling rules do not regulate the information about the cultivars used in olive oil production. However, a few countries have adopted their own rules about it.

“At a national level (in Italy), some specific regulations have been introduced,” Capecci and Ciancio said. “They ensure the information provided on the label be truthful.”

“[Such tools are] the outlining of the cultivars in the official business profile [of the farm] and the detailed traceability of the single lots of olive oil reported in the telematic register of oils,” they added.

In many countries where olive oil production is part of a long-standing family tradition, a significant percentage of the overall national yield is consumed at home. In many cases, families and small growers with a surplus of olive oil may sell it locally.

However, the current regulations prohibit this practice as all products on sale for consumers or restaurants must be packaged and labeled according to the new rules. This means that packaging operations must be conducted by a legally-sanctioned operator whose olive oil lots are reported in the national registry.

“Specific fines are currently provided for such violations, such as the €800 to €4,800 fine for the sale of olive oil packaged in containers that do not have an adequate closure locking system,” Capecci and Ciancio warned.

“As a matter of fact, European Union regulations and the national regulations about the olive oil sector define highly specific rules when it comes to labeling, with the aim of offering the consumers transparent and truthful information,” they added.

Other aspects covered by the new E.U. regulations include the “age of the product” declared on the labels.

“Operators should be allowed to indicate the harvest year on the label of extra virgin and virgin olive oils but only when 100 percent of the contents of the container come from a single harvesting year,” the commission wrote.

“Since the olive harvest usually begins during the autumn and ends by spring in the following year, it is appropriate to clarify how to label the harvesting year,” it added.

With an October 13th decision (2022/2103), the E.U. also announced the official position on the planned elimination of the “ordinary virgin olive oil” category by the IOC.

The E.U. will support the IOC’s decision to remove “ordinary virgin olive oil” as an official olive oil category, as it is already excluded by the previous E.U. rules and their most recent updates.

The previous IOC standard specified “ordinary virgin olive oil” as a virgin olive oil defined by the presence of oleic acid in no more than 3.3 grams per 100 grams.

The Change.org petition has already received more than 35,000 signatures and is supported by 35 French health associations. Many signatories are physicians involved in cancer, heart health, food addiction and consumer behavior research.

The petition’s authors wrote that Nutri-Score has “demonstrated its effectiveness” in the five years since it was adopted on a voluntary basis in France and other European countries.

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. All grades of olive oil receive the “Light-Green B” rating after the latest update to the Nutri-Score algorithm.

The petition’s promoters pointed out that no food companies were in favor of Nutri-Score when it was first proposed in 2014, but since then, more than 800 brands have voluntarily adopted the FOPL.

However, they added that many leading global brands continue to oppose and lobby against Nutri-Score, including Coca-Cola, Ferrero, Mars, Lactalis, Mondelez and Kraft.

For the past few years, Nutri-Score was widely seen as the front-runner of about a half-dozen FOPLs to be selected for mandatory adoption across the European Union.

However, criticism of Nutri-Score has crescendoed over the same period reaching its climax at a recent European Parliament roundtable event.

Italian politicians and European agricultural associations have long argued that Nutri-Score unjustly punishes farmers and fails to consider traditional food products’ roles in local culinary cultures.

After the event, one commission official told a food industry media outlet that no existing food label would be adopted by the European Commission, which would create its own based on the existing FOPLs.

Separately, Italy’s permanent representation to the E.U. said the commission would delay the decision to adopt a mandatory food labeling system until the second half of 2023.

According to the French petition signatories, Nutri-Score should be adopted for all food packages on sale without exception “to guide our choices in a reasoned way, with full knowledge of the facts.”

“We consider this to be a consumer right and a duty of economic operators,” they added.

To that end, the petitioners asked the French government to protect Nutri-Score in Europe, called for the European Parliament to adopt Nutri-Score and demanded food producers to adopt Nutri-Score “to respond to consumer demand for true nutritional transparency on the composition of foods.”

To the unanointed, olive oil is all-encompassing.

It comes in $40 bottles from boutique specialty stores in the world’s most cosmopolitan cities. Meanwhile, five-liter tins gather dust on deli floors in sleepy towns.

Thousands of kilometers away, drums, totes and flexitanks — emblazoned with the same two words — travel across the oceans on massive container ships.

To add to the confusion, in most supermarket aisles olive oil is usually combined with a series of prefixes.

These range from the extravagant (ultra-premium) to the mundane (pure) to the truly cryptic (polyphenol-rich).

But what do these prefixes actually mean? The short answer: nothing.

Who gets to define what olive oil is?

The only olive oil prefixes to which consumers should pay any attention are those laid out by the five major olive oil regulating authorities: the Codex Alimentarius, International Olive Council (IOC), European Union, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Australian authorities.

There are many other national authorities that have formally legislated olive oil standards and grades too, but they largely follow the groundwork laid by the five aforementioned regulators.

As with rules governing most foods, the first technical definitions of olive oil were laid out by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in the Codex Alimentarius.

Originally, the Codex Alimentarius defined four separate olive oil grades: olive oil, virgin olive oil, refined olive oil and refined olive-pomace oil. Most regulatory authorities worldwide have based their own olive oil standards and grades on these original four.

How is olive oil defined?

From the four grades of olive oil laid out in the Codex Alimentarius, nine different categories of olive oil and olive-pomace oil are defined by the IOC.

However, in the European Union, which is responsible for more than three-quarters of global production, this figure drops to eight.

These categories fall into three separate groups:

• Virgin oils for consumption;
• Blended or refined olive oil and pomace oil and virgin olive oils fit for consumption;
• Olive oil not fit for consumption

While there is broad agreement internationally about the different olive oil categories, their definitions change based on where the olive oil is produced. However, it is important to note that olive oil labels must accurately reflect the appropriate category in the country where the oil will be sold.

Virgin oils

Virgin olive oils are obtained solely by mechanical or other physical means under thermal conditions that do not alter the chemical composition of the oil. The only treatment that the olives and oil undergo are washing, decantation, centrifugation and filtration.

1. Extra virgin olive oil

The Codex Alimentarius, IOC, the USDA and Australian authorities define extra virgin olive as having an excellent flavor and odor with the median of defects – the median score of one of the 12 olive oil defects, which is perceived with the greatest intensity – as zero and the median of fruitiness above zero. extra virgin olive oil also has a free fatty acid content expressed as oleic acid less than 0.8 grams per 100 grams.

While most governments around the world adhere to the standards set out in the Codex Alimentarius, the definition for extra virgin olive oil is more strict in California, which permits a free fatty acid content expressed as oleic acid less than 0.5 grams per 100 grams. However, the organoleptic requirements remain the same.

2. Virgin olive oil

The Codex Alimentarius, IOC and E.U. define virgin olive oil as having a reasonably good flavor and odor with the median of defects between zero and 3.5, with the median of fruitiness attribute above zero. The free fatty acid content, expressed as oleic acid, is less than two grams per 100 grams.

The USDA and Australian authorities have slightly stricter organoleptic requirements, with the median of defects between zero and 2.5 with the median of fruitiness attribute above zero. The free fatty acid content remains the same.

3. Ordinary virgin olive oil

The Codex Alimentarius, IOC and Australian authorities define ordinary virgin olive oil as having a median of defects between 3.5 and six, with a median of fruitiness above zero. The free fatty acid content, expressed as oleic acid, must be less than 3.3 grams per 100 grams.

Ordinary virgin olive oil is not very common as it may only be sold directly to consumers in countries where the category is recognized.

Blended of refined olive oil and olive pomace oil and virgin olive oils fit for consumption

4. Refined olive oil blended with virgin olive oils (olive oil, in the U.S.)

The Codex Alimentarius, E.U., IOC, Australian authorities and USDA define this category of olive oil as comprising a blend of refined olive oil with virgin olive oils fit for consumption.

The final blend of the two has a free acidity, expressed as oleic acid, of less than one gram per 100 grams. Its organoleptic characteristics correspond to virgin olive oil but may vary depending on individual regulations in each country.

5. Olive pomace oil composed of refined olive-pomace oils and virgin olive oils

Olive pomace oil is obtained by extracting the last remaining droplets of oil from olives that have already been mechanically transformed. The process usually involves chemically extracting the oil with powerful solvents before evaporating these out of the final product and deodorizing the resulting oil.

The Codex Alimentarius, E.U., IOC and USDA define olive pomace oil as comprising a blend of refined olive pomace oil and virgin olive oils fit for consumption. Free fatty acid content must be less than one gram per 100 grams.

In Australia, authorities have slightly more strict requirements, also requiring olive pomace oils to have the same organoleptic standards as virgin olive oil, a median of defects less than or equal to 2.5.

Olive oil not fit for human consumption

6. Lampante virgin olive oil

The Codex Alimentarius and IOC broadly define lampante virgin olive oil as an olive oil obtained solely by mechanical methods that is not fit for human consumption. Its free fatty acid content, expressed as oleic acid, is more than 3.3 grams per 100 grams. Its organoleptic characteristics also have a median of defects greater than six and a median of fruitiness of zero. These types of oils are typically sent to be refined and then blended.

However, the USDA and Australian authorities have a slightly stricter definition for lampante virgin olive oil. They define the product as having a median of defects between 2.5 and 6 or a median of defects less than or equal to 2.5 with a median of fruitiness of zero. Free fatty acid content, expressed as oleic acid, must be less than two grams per 100 grams.

The E.U. has very similar rules to the USDA and Australia, only differing in that the median of defects must be above 3.5 or the median of defects must be less than or equal to 2.5 with a fruitiness of zero.

7. Refined olive oil

The Codex Alimentarius, E.U., IOC, Australian authorities and USDA define refined olive oil as having been obtained from virgin olive oils using refining methods that do not alter the initial glyceridic structure, esters comprising glycerol and fatty acids. The free fatty acid content, expressed as oleic acid, is less than 0.3 grams per 100 grams.

8. Crude olive pomace oil

The Codex Alimentarius, E.U., IOC and USDA define crude olive pomace oil as the product obtained by extracting the last remaining droplets of oil from olives that have already been mechanically transformed. The process usually involves chemically extracting the oil with powerful solvents before evaporating these out of the final product and deodorizing the resulting oil.

9. Refined olive pomace oil

The Codex Alimentarius, E.U., IOC and USDA define refined olive pomace oil as being obtained from crude olive pomace oil using methods that do not lead to alterations in the initial glyceridic structure. It has a free fatty acidity, expressed as oleic acid, of not more than 0.3 grams per 100 grams.

The main takeaways

Shopping for olive oil should not be as hard as it is. Really, most consumers are in the market for either an extra virgin, virgin or refined olive oil blended with virgin olive oil.

When shopping for olive oil, pay no heed to the myriad prefixes adorning ornate labels. Simply pay attention to the terms “virgin” and “extra virgin.” Any other prefixes – with the exception of “organic” – are utterly meaningless (no matter what the YouTube videos say).

Extra virgin and virgin olive oils are more expensive than a blend of refined and virgin olive oils, which usually will not be labeled “refined olive oil blended with virgin olive oil.”

However, any labeling description from plain “olive oil” to “pure olive oil,” “light olive oil,” “premium olive oil” or “fresh olive oil” is simply a blend of refined and virgin olive oils.

Caveat emptor.

President Joe Biden’s administration said it would push for a series of legislative and executive actions through cooperation with national and local institutions, the food industry, schools and other stakeholders.

These include improving food access and quality, promoting physical activity and researching food security and nutrition issues. A new approach to food labeling is also a crucial part of the initiative.

“We are mobilizing the will to meet a bold goal: to end hunger in America and increase healthy eating and physical activity by 2030, so fewer Americans experience diet-related diseases,” Biden said during a speech introducing the new plan.

One of the pillars of the new strategy is increasing consumer awareness about the food they buy to promote healthy choices. To this end, current food labeling will be updated with the introduction of a front-of-pack labeling (FOPL) system.

According to the new plan, the FOPL would foster a healthier approach to food and prompt the industry to improve the health of its food.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will develop the labeling system, instructing the industry on using the Dietary Guidelines Statements on food labels.

To this end, the FDA proposed a rule update for the “healthy” claim on food products which was introduced in 1994 and is now considered outdated.

The current regulation specifies limits on contents such as fat, sodium and cholesterol and sets minimum amounts of nutrients such as vitamins A and C, calcium, iron, protein and dietary fiber. Approximately 5 percent of all packaged food currently is labeled “healthy.”

The FDA said it would allow the use of the health claim for foods that help consumers follow a healthy dietary pattern according to current nutrition science. The agency cited olive oil as an example of a food that was previously excluded but now may receive the “healthy” claim.

The FDA wrote that the use of olive oil as a replacement for more common saturated fats “is supported by current nutrition science and emphasized by federal dietary guidance… as part of a healthy dietary pattern.”

Under the current regime, olive oil cannot bear the “healthy” claim because it does not contain 10 percent of the daily value of required nutrients.

“Thus, the existing ‘healthy’ claim has become inconsistent with the longstanding purpose of this type of implied claim to indicate that the nutrient levels in a food may help consumers maintain healthy dietary practices,” the FDA said.

The core of the new proposed framework uses a food group-based approach which, the FDA said, is “based on the understanding that each food group contributes an array of important nutrients to the diet.”

Therefore, the FDA added, the new healthy criteria would “emphasize healthy dietary patterns by requiring food products” to be labeled “healthy” when they “contain a certain amount of food from at least one of the food groups or subgroups recommended by the Dietary Guidelines, 2020 to 2025.”

Once enacted, the new regulation would limit added sugars, saturated fats and sodium. It would also include “certain recordkeeping requirements for foods bearing the claim where compliance cannot be verified through information on the product label.”

Comments on the new FDA proposed regulation update will be accepted until December 28, 2022.

• White House
• FDA

Stella Kyriakides confirmed in a speech to European agricultural ministers that the official regulation for a common food labeling platform is close to being published.

Kyriakides praised the efforts of European countries that have already deployed FOPLs that help consumers make healthier choices. However, she warned that so many disparate labels increased costs for businesses and contributed to confusion among consumers.

“Many of you have introduced national recommendations or legislation on front-of-pack nutrition labeling, the origin of certain foods and labeling alcoholic beverages,” she said. “However, they are not aligned. This can lead to consumer confusion, barriers to free movement of goods and extra company costs.”

Kyriakides said the European Commission’s decision was being shaped by research undertaken by different European institutions and the recommendations made by consumers, farming associations, food producers and other stakeholders who participated in the public consultation.

Kyriakides added the final decision “takes on board” the European Food Safety Authority’s opinion about the role of the Mediterranean diet in preventing and mitigating a series of widespread diseases.

The European Commission is also considering the results of an E.U. Joint Research Center study, which found that consumers prefer effectively simple and colored FOPLs published on the product packaging (as opposed to a QR code), such as Nutri-Score.

The push toward a common and mandatory food packaging label is part of the broader Farm-to-Fork Strategy announced two years ago by the European Commission to promote sustainability and environmentally-friendly food production practices.

Front-of-pack food labels are also considered crucial for the goals of the Commission’s Beating Cancer plan.

Based on the findings of the JRC report, Nutri-Score appears to remain the most probable candidate among the FOPLs being considered for E.U.-wide adoption.

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.

The food rating system has gained wide acceptance in a number of European countries. Still, it has come under intense criticism in Italy, where it is believed that adopting Nutri-Score would hurt traditional producers.

There had also been widespread opposition from olive oil producers and their allies in Europe’s three largest producing countries. However, a revision in the algorithm improved olive oil’s score from a “Yellow C” to “Light green B” and has largely assuaged concerns.

The European Commission is expected to announce its final decision before March 2023.

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

The revised rating system will soon consider all olive oils in its Light-green‑B category, a step above the current Yellow‑C and just one step below the healthiest rating, the Green‑A.

Its backers said the French-born front-of-pack-labeling (FOPL) system had undergone a broad review in the last 18 months, which set the basis for a significant overhaul of the algorithm. The new ratings will affect several different categories of food.

“Yes, the Nutri-Score algorithm will be changed in the near future,” Serge Hercberg, the creator of Nutri-Score and nutrition professor at the University of Sorbonne Paris Nord, told Olive Oil Times.

The updated rating of fats, such as olive oil and vegetable oils, will consider their macro-nutritional composition, such as the presence of saturated fatty acids.

“In general, vegetable oils are improved by one [rating],” Hercberg said. “Vegetable oils with low levels of saturated fatty acids, such as rapeseed, walnut and oleic sunflower oil, can reach the B classification, as does olive oil. Sunflower oil is shifted to the C classification.”

“For the other products in the category, the classification remains unchanged, with coconut oil and butter remaining classified as E in the Nutri-Score,” he added.

Nutri-Score is a five-color-letter food rating system, with scores ranging from the Green‑A down to the Red‑E. The FOPL is designed to help consumers make healthier choices in the supermarket. The algorithm determines a food item’s score based on the macronutrient content per 100 grams or milliliters.

“Nutri-Score is a public health tool built and validated by numerous scientific studies,” Hercberg said. “When it was proposed by scientists in 2014… it was expected that its algorithm would evolve and be regularly revised on the basis of the evolution of scientific knowledge and the experience of its deployment.”

Along with its introduction in France, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland, Nutri-Score is also considered the front-runner among the food labels being considered for Europen Union-wide adoption. A formal decision is expected to come before the end of the year.

The steering committee, formed at the beginning of last year by the seven European countries that have adopted Nutri-Score, announced the review of the FOPL’s algorithm.

Its goal is to facilitate the debate on Nutri-Score, support food producers in using and understanding Nutri-Score and support the work of the scientific branch.

The scientific committee, which was tasked with developing and implementing the labeling platform, presented the report on the update.

The update rebalances how the algorithm considers the food’s nutritional elements. In the case of olive oil, its polyphenols and other micronutrients are taken into consideration.

The updated algorithm also changes how nuts, seeds and other fats are rated, with a special rule for red meat.

More specifically, Nutri-Score now gives higher priorities to elements such as sodium and sugar and will align red meat ratings with the countries’ nutritional guidelines, many of which recommend reducing red meat consumption. The update will also improve the rating for fish and wholegrains compared to refined products.

“Overall, the analysis of the literature showed that there was substantial evidence of the beneficial effect of olive oil on the risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality, with a significant number of studies being performed,” the report’s authors wrote.

“Given the evidence that vegetable oils, in particular olive oil, have demonstrated beneficial effects on health, modifications to the algorithm could be performed to improve the scoring of olive and other vegetable oils with favorable nutrient profiles in the system and support dietary guidelines that advocate the moderate use of vegetable oils preferably to other fats,” they added.

The review involved scientists from the countries where Nutri-Score is already deployed. According to the report, upgrading the algorithm has included thoroughly examining each component of the current algorithm, the areas of improvement and the potential impact of every change.

Farmers, bottlers and marketers in Europe’s three largest producing countries have long criticized Nutri-Score’s rating of olive oil. Similar criticism has come from the producers of other traditional food products, including French and Italian cheese producers.

“The changes in the computation of the underlying Nutri-Score algorithm as recommended by the scientific committee are not linked to the insistence of food producers, be it olive oil or other types of food,” Hercberg said. “The modifications are based exclusively on scientific and public health considerations.”

“[They] lead to changes for some food groups, and more specifically introduce better discrimination among food products according to their nutritional composition,” he added. “Concerning cheese, only low-salt hard cheeses, such as Emmental, can now be classified as C in the Nutri-Score. Others continue to rank D or E, such as Roquefort.”

The changes will not immediately come into effect as any modifications will affect the food production chain, the nodes of which might need some time to digest the news.

The steering committee “explained that the new algorithm will be effective soon, at the end of a sufficient time for food producers to implement the label,” Hercberg said.

“It must also be considered that more information from the committee is still pending, specifically on beverages, sweetened drinks and others,” he added.

Hercberg emphasized that the team behind Nutri-Score will support food producers in the countries that have already deployed the FOPL. He hopes Nutri-Score will become mandatory due to its scientifically-demonstrated benefits to public health.

“We hope that the decision of the European Commission will not be affected by the pressures coming from some big food companies, agricultural sectors or countries defending their economic interest,” Hercberg said.

“We hope that it will instead be entirely based on science and the scientific studies published by independent academic research teams, also considering the demand for such a solution that comes from the consumers themselves,” he concluded.

• Nutri-Score
• Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition

Producers participating in the E.U.-backed Aristoil Plus project will soon be able to apply the Aristoil Collar labels to their products that meet the nutraceutical standards set by E.U. Regulation 432/12.

The Aristoil Plus project involves five partners from Spain, Italy, Greece and Montenegro. Its latest initiative follows up on the group’s efforts to enhance production techniques and technologies to improve the quality of its members’ extra virgin olive oil.

“The main success of Aristoil Plus is due to the involvement of all parts of the olive oil production chain, including scientific partners, institutions and consumers, which have participated in the process that resulted in the cluster,” said Emilia Arrabito, director of the Euro-Mediterranean Center for Sustainable Development, a non-profit directly involved in the project.

“Such a project is of certain significance to raising producers’ and consumers’ awareness about the nutraceutical qualities of extra virgin olive oil and, more specifically, of its polyphenols,” she added. “The Aristoil Collar is the starting point of a new adventure where the cluster will be recognized by the consumers who will therefore have access to high-quality products.”

The international partners of the project – including Italian food quality and fraud prevention authorities and a coalition of European cities for sustainable development – will work with producer associations and public entities to further develop the Aristoil guidelines and organize workshops for all stakeholders of the olive oil production chain.

“We aim to offer Mediterranean producers the tools to bring to the market a product that has a relevant healthy value so that consumers will not be thinking of olive oil just as seasoning but as a basic and fundamental part of their diets,” said Michele Sonnessa, president of Città dell’Olio, a network of hundreds of olive oil-producing Italian municipalities that participates in Aristoil, at a meeting in Rome.

“That will only be possible through the cooperation of the partners and the involved countries, with an approach aimed at promoting extra virgin olive oil,” he added. “The goal of the project will be to support expert training and the exchange of know-how, technologies and experiences to promote and market the nutraceutical extra virgin olive oil.”

• Città dell’Olio

The association analyzed 588 food samples derived from 310 traditional products, many of which are certified with Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) or Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status from the E.U.

UFC-Que Choisir wrote in a press release that at least two-thirds of those samples “got good grades” from Nutri-Score.

Nutri-Score grades foods based on the contents such as fat, sugar, salt and calories in 100 grams or milliliters of the food. It then rates the food with a color/letter code emblazoned on the packages, from the healthiest “Green A” down to the “Red E.”

In the survey, 62 percent of the tested food products came out with a Nutri-Score grade of A, B or C. Consumption of such foods “is often encouraged because of their superior nutritional qualities,” UFC-Que Choisir wrote.

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

In the press release, UFC-Que Choisir highlighted a few examples of renowned specialties, “traditional foods which show to be very well balanced, such as the Flemish hochepot, the Auvergne hotpot or the famous Castelnaudary cassoulet.”

Other examples include traditional meat and cold cuts, fruits and legumes, all receiving the A and B ratings. Within the Nutri-Score C classification, olive oils are in the company of products such as Alsatian spaetzle pasta or parsley ham from Burgundy.

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

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

The association added that D or E‑rated products might have their place in a balanced diet.

Nutri-Score inventor Serge Hercberg told Olive Oil Times in a July 2020 interview that Nutri-Score ratings are meant to show consumers the best available choice of food within a given food category.

For example, Nutri-Score considers olive oils the best choice in the fats category with its C, attributing a D to other fats such as butter.

The association’s survey came on the heels of the ongoing heated debate between Nutri-Score’s promoters and food producers which is intensifying as the European Commission’s self-imposed deadline of December to choose a European-wide front-of-pack label approaches.

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

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

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

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

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

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

According to UFC-Que Choisir, Nutri-Score is the best tool available to allow consumers to make a quick and informed choice when buying food products.

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

• UFC-Que Choisir