Flawed Nutri-score system should be a cautionary tale for policy makers

"Food profiling systems represent a road map for consumers, for industry formulations and for policy makers. If the roadmap is not accurate, we will not be happy with our final destination." Those are the words of Dr Dariush Mozaffarian, one of the scientists who have called into question the Nutri-score system of food labelling.

After years of trying to implement the Nutri-score traffic light system of food nutrition labelling, it appears that the EU has abandoned its attempt to roll it out acroos all 27 member states. This is because the scientific basis for the system is flawed and creates "many absurdities" like scoring a can of soda higher than olive oil.

Dr Mozaffarian and his colleagues at the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University have developed an alternative system called Food Compass that claims to provide a more holistic measure of the nourishing value of different foods. But this underlines an issue that BMPA has been highlighting for some time. That is that governments mustn't rush to implement mandatory labelling and classification systems without first ensuring that the science that underpins them is robust, something that carbon labelling still cannot claim.

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