Linguistically, the Nutri-score achieves recognition. Monday, May 8, the name of this nutritional logo affixed to food packaging, which informs their composition according to a note from A to E and a color code, entered the new words integrated into the Larousse dictionary. On the political level, on the other hand, the file is becalmed. More than five months after the deadline for the European Commission to propose legislation for common nutrition labeling for the twenty-seven Member States, as it had undertaken to do in its roadmap for sustainable food “From the farm to the fork” (in English, “Farm to fork” or “F2F”), the file is at a standstill.
Labeling is an extremely sensitive subject and the Nutri-score adopted (in a non-binding manner) by France and six other European countries (Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Luxembourg and Switzerland) arouses fierce opposition from some of the agri-food industry and certain agricultural sectors, fearing a downgrading of poorly rated products. These arguments have found an echo with political representatives, starting with the Italian leaders, who are up in arms against this logo, which they consider offensive for the emblematic products of transalpine gastronomy.
Regretting arguments “absurd and dishonest” and “fake news effective enough to induce the European Commission not to keep its commitments”, a group of 320 international scientists and health professionals, specializing in nutrition, public health, preventive medicine, oncology, etc., published a report, Thursday, May 11, on the scientific foundations on which the Nutri-score is based. In this 60-page document, they call on the European Commission to “Proposing, as soon as possible, legislation to adopt mandatory interpretative nutrition labeling at European Union level, which is based on science, as is the case of Nutri-score. »
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There list of signatories account of renowned scientists, such as the Brazilian epidemiologist Carlos Monteiro, professor of public health at the University of Sao Paulo, whose work has brought out the concept of ultra-processed food, the American biologist Marion Nestle, professor emeritus in the department of nutrition from the University of New York, or the Briton Mike Rayner, professor of population health at the University of Oxford and one of the instigators of a nutritional logo in the United Kingdom.
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