Danone Plans to Abandon Nutri-Score on Many of Its Products

Danone, a French multi­na­tional food pro­ducer and one of the ear­li­est adopters of Nutri-Score, announced that it would sig­nif­i­cantly reduce its use of the French front-of-pack label­ing (FOPL) sys­tem.

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.

• Just Drinks
• Great Italian Food Trade
• Nutri-Score