Processed foods are hiding in plain sight — and that could be a big public health problem
Processed foods are hiding in plain sight — and that could be a big public health problem
Over 60% of the foods available in a typical American supermarkets fall into the category of ultra-processed
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In my country we have a mandatory "Nutri-Score" that goes from "A" (good for you) to "E" (pure junk).
Guess what? Plain white toast has a score of "A", because the companies successfully exploited loopholes in the ruling. So if the companies can basically print bogus scores on junk food, how should a normal layperson know good from bad?
This is nonsense. There are no loopholes for the Nutriscore. The reason toast has an A is just that carbs are not considered bad in the calculation which I also don't agree with but it is not a loophole.
They add broad bean flour just to get an A, otherwise they would get a C or D. There is no real reason for broad bean flour being present in a loaf of bread, except for faking a better NutriScore.
That probably increases the fiber and/or the protein content, which actually does make the bread healthier. I'm not saying that the formula is perfect and they are changing values around to make it better. But the system is so simple that the only way to game it is to actually make your products better.
The problem is that broad bean flour was primarily chosen because it is cheap and overrated. The latter will be corrected in the next set of rules, so there is actually no more reason to add it to plain white toast. So either the companies find another loophole/wrongly rated ingredient, or the plain white will drop from A to C or D where it belongs as a highly processed and not exacly healthy food.
Nutriscore was never meant and never advertised as an absolute measure of healthiness. It was always meant to be used to compare products in the same category. I agree that toast should not have an A but it doesn't mean that it is healthy, only that it is healthier than bread with a worse rating. I agree that the values in the formula should be updated so that toast has a lower rating than whole wheat bread but that doesn't mean the Nutriscore is useless.