NutriScore: Is It Really Helping Us Eat Healthier?
In recent years, the NutriScore system has been adopted in several European countries to help consumers make healthier food choices. But how effective is this nutritional traffic light system, really? And more importantly: can it be considered a reliable tool for those who want to eat consciously and in a personalized way?
In this article, we analyze the structural limitations of NutriScore, explain why it can be misleading, and show how Luminatens, the personalized nutritional analysis app, offers a more complete and tailored alternative.
What Is NutriScore and How Does It Work?
NutriScore is a color-coded label that assigns a score to foods, from A (dark green) to E (red). The score is calculated using an algorithm that adds up positive and negative points, primarily considering:
- calories
- sugars
- saturated fats
- salt
balanced against:
- fiber
- protein
- percentage of fruit, vegetables, and legumes
Although the intention is commendable—making nutritional information accessible to all—the system has several structural limitations.
The Limitations of NutriScore
1. It Doesn’t Evaluate Ingredient Quality
NutriScore is based solely on macronutrients and doesn’t take into account the quality or origin of ingredients.
This leads to paradoxes: an ultra-processed product full of additives but optimized to score well (e.g., with added fiber or reduced saturated fat) can receive an A, while a natural product like extra virgin olive oil may be penalized with a C or D due to its calorie density and fat content—despite its proven health benefits.
2. It’s Generalist and Not Customizable
NutriScore offers a single evaluation for all consumers, ignoring the fact that everyone has different needs.
Someone following a ketogenic diet, for instance, favors fats and limits carbs—many suitable foods for this diet would receive poor scores. The same goes for those on vegan or carnivore diets.
3. It Favors Industrial Products
Many products are designed to “win” at NutriScore: by adding synthetic fiber, reducing fat, or using artificial sweeteners.
This creates the illusion of healthiness, even when the food is highly processed and far from natural.
How Luminatens Provides a Better Alternative
Personalized Ratings
Unlike NutriScore, Luminatens adapts the nutritional score to your personal profile: your current diet (omnivore, vegetarian, vegan, keto, carnivore) and food category.
This makes the results more aligned with your health and dietary goals.
Detailed Nutritional Analysis
Each scan provides accurate values per 100g, including:
calories, carbohydrates (and sugars), proteins, fats (and saturated), fiber, and salt.
Not just a color code—but real data you can use to make your own informed decisions.
Advanced Food Tracking
Luminatens keeps track of your eating habits with a full history and offers trend charts, macronutrient breakdowns, time comparisons, food word clouds, and much more.
Pro plan users gain access to scatter plots, box plots, time comparisons, and in-depth nutritional score analysis.
Transparency Note: Ingredient Reading
At present, Luminatens does not analyze the ingredient list of scanned products, relying solely on the nutritional values shown on the label.
However, this is a planned feature for the future—to make the analysis even more complete and reliable.
If you also are curious about the different existing types of food labels, check out our other article!