how industrialists and lobbies are reluctant to this label appreciated by consumers

In a Nantes supermarket, Moussaka, fusilli with chicken and chopped parmentier pile up in the brigitte shopping cart. The 72 -year -old retiree leaves a few days and wants to best choose the prepared dishes that her husband will consume during her absence.

She is interested in the composition – “I want as little conservatives as possible”; She looks at the origin of meats-“preferably French”-but above all peel the Nutri-Score.

This non -compulsory logo which attributes to the products a note ranging from a green to red, according to their nutritional quality, was launched in 2017 from the work of the French epidemiologist Serge Hercberg. The idea was to “provide the consumer with synthetic and visual information which allows him to easily integrate nutritional quality into his selection of processed foods”.

Nutri-score does not include dyes and other preservatives

A rather successful bet, since only three years after its application, 57 % of French people had already taken it into account to change at least one of their purchasing habits and 18 % spontaneously cited it as a criterion of choice (1). In teens too, the message passes. In 2021, more than half of the 11-17 year olds having bought a product including the index on its packaging ensured that it had been motivated in their decision by the presence of the latter (1).

Maxime, a 32 -year -old Parisian, employs it especially to compare products and “decide what to take”, while recognizing his limits. “You should not make it its only criterion of choice, a product can be green when it contains additives, for example,” he explains.

The Nutri-Score does not include dyes and other preservatives, it “sums up the information on the back of the packaging and takes into account the elements to be limited (sugar, salt, fat) counterbalanced by those to favor such as the proportion of vegetables, fibers, proteins”, explains Mélanie Deschasaux-Tanguy, researcher at Inserm.

Stricter criteria

To take into account the evolution of the food market and scientific advances-such as the link between consumption of red meat and colorectal cancer-, the Nutri-Score algorithm was retouched in 2024.

However, this new, more strict version, in force among some of our European neighbors (2) and planned from its creation, was only accepted in France as a result of strong tensions between the Ministries of Health and Agriculture.

These government tightness is all the more worry about consumer associations they occur shortly after the abandonment of the compulsory display project of Nutri-Score by the European Union, under pressure from Italy and industrial lobbies.

Decisions that Olivier Andrault regrets, from the UFC-Que Choisir, because the Nutri-Score, adopted by 1,450 companies, had the positive effect of encouraging them to “improve the recipes of several products to win one or two classes”.

Some foods will change score. Butter, for example, classified E., Brigitte, the septuagenarian, assumes it: “We are Bretons, we are not going to do without it!” »»

(1) Public health surveys France, 2020 and 2021

(2) Belgium, Germany, Pays, Switzerland