As the old saying goes, when we move the interests of others, we are all reformers, but when we move our own interests, we all become conservatives.
On September 4, 2024, global food giant Danone held a press conference to announce that it would no longer display a nutritional score, known as Nutri-Score, on its drinking yogurt.
Danone is a leader in the industry, with a long history and a strong presence in more than 120 countries around the world. Danone's fresh dairy products, biscuits and beverages are its three main products, Chinese and the familiar Aptamil milk powder, pulse and Evian are all his brands.
And France's nutrition scoring system, Nutri-Score, also known as five-color nutrition label or 5-CNL, is a five-color nutrition label and nutrition rating system designed to simplify the nutrition rating system to show the overall nutritional value of food. It assigns a rating letter to the product from A (best) to E (worst) with a relevant color ranging from green to red.
Specific to whether the food is A or E, there is a complex algorithm, based on the nutritional composition of the food, the components that are not good for the human body, such as sugar, lipid and more than a certain proportion will get negative points, and the components that are beneficial to the human body, such as protein, fiber, and vitamins will reach a certain proportion, will get a positive score, and finally determine the nutritional level according to the total score.
The scoring system, which has been in place for seven years and is voluntary, is overseen by the France Public Health Agency (Santé Publique France) and is recommended by other EU countries, as well as by the European Commission and the World Health Organization.
This scoring system has contributed to the improvement of the quality of food in France, because it is often regarded as unhealthy food without such a grade, and the purpose of this system is not to let bad money drive out good money. As a result, many France companies, including Danone, are actively involved and are proud to display their nutritional score scores on their products.
So why did Danone suddenly turn around and decide not to put this label on its products anymore?
Because of the reform!
In recent years, the France Scientific Committee on Nutrition Scoring has found that with the advancement of technology and the upgrading of people's nutritional needs, the original scoring system needs to be upgraded, and the new algorithm to be launched, in addition to the original nutritional value of the food by the content of fat or sugar, will also be based on the type of vegetable oil used, and whether artificial sweeteners are added to score.
Some of Danone's products either use palm oil or artificial sweeteners. Just imagine, if the new algorithm is implemented, and its own product is labeled with a "C" or even "E", it will be a shameful thing, so Danone simply quit and stopped playing.
In fact, the countries that have launched the nutrition scoring system are not only France, the United States has a health star scoring system, the United Kingdom has a traffic light system, and Singapore also has a prepackaged beverage grading policy.
On March 26 this year, the Shanghai Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention announced that in order to guide the public to eat healthily, the "nutritional choice" grading label developed by the center began to be piloted in Shanghai.
The nutritional choice grading label is a comprehensive classification of beverages according to the content of non-dairy sugars, saturated fats, trans fats, and non-sugar sweeteners in beverages. The rating is identified by four ABCD grades, from A to D, with decreasing levels of recommendation.
Shanghai's attempt is a major progress in the field of food safety in China, Chinese like to say that the concept of food safety is not covered by the fight against counterfeiting, so that the people can eat more clearly and guide in a healthier direction, which is the highest food safety concept.