What is the food Yuka score really worth?

If you’ve ever put a product back after scanning it on the shelves with the Yuka app, you’re not alone: ​​according to an impact study published by Yuka in 2019, 92% of the app’s 6 million active users put products back when they’re rated in red. The impact is sometimes strongly criticized by some players in the agro-industry.

But how does the Yuka score work? And on what basis are the criticisms against him based?

A score without a scientific basis?

While several food product rating systems coexist, two scores now mainly guide French consumers on supermarket shelves: the Nutri-Score, present on certain packaging and recommended by the Ministry of Health since 2017, which is mainly interested in the nutritional value of foods (especially penalizing the presence of negative nutrients such as saturated fatty acids and salt), and the score of the Yuka application, an application created in 2017, which today has some 6 million active users. .

The Yuka grading system is based on three criteria:

• Nutritional quality represents 60% of the score
• The presence of additives: 30%
• The biological dimension of the products: 10%

The co-founder of Yuka, Julie Chapon, surveyed consumers and nutritionists in 2017 to design this score: “ We conducted a consumer survey to find out what criteria were important to them. (…) Then, we called in nutritionists, and the 60%, 30%, 10% system was the system that corresponded the most to what was recommended to us. “, she explains.

However, the Yuka score is regularly criticized for its lack of scientific basis. In a Senate report published in June 2022 that looks at the impact of food rating apps on the industry, industry associations and major brands highlight what they consider to be a “subjective” rating algorithm. More unexpectedly, nutritionist Serge Hercberg, who designed the Nutriscore in 2014, also challenged the scientific viability of the Yuka score, believing in particular that it was too difficult today to establish the real degree of danger of additives, yet occupying 30% of the Yuka score.

To these attacks, the co-founder of Yuka responds: “ If you ask scientists who do not work with the State and who have no conflict of interest on the subject of additives, I think it is fairly unanimous that additives must be taken into account. (…) There are even users who ask us today to inform them only about the additives part “.

The place of additives in the Yuka score: the battle of the charcuterie sector

The place given to the dangerousness of additives is at the heart of the main accusations made by agribusiness players against the Yuka score. The central argument of these players consists in fact of emphasizing that additives considered dangerous by the application are authorized at national and European level. An argument taken up by three organizations in the charcuterie sector which took Yuka to court in 2021, including the FICT (main lobby for charcuterie professionals) which accused the application of “unfair and misleading practice” for the warnings issued by Yuka against nitrate additives in food.

The application assigns very low scores to foods containing nitrites, these additives used to extend the shelf life of cold meats, and referred to a petition published in 2019 by the NGO Foodwatch and the League against cancer, asking for the ban of these substances recognized as carcinogens by ANSES in a report published in July 2022.

Faced with the commercial courts of Aix-en-Provence, Paris and Brive, which tried these cases at first instance, Yuka lost her three trials in 2021. A more than expected outcome given the constitution of the commercial court in France, according to Julie Chapon: “ At the commercial court, they are not judges and magistrates. At the commercial court, we are judged by traders and business leaders “, she protests.

If the commercial court has several mechanisms to ensure the independence of its judges and to avoid any conflict of interest, an investigation by Marianne last April recalled the close links between the agro-industry sector and this court, and mentioned the profile, to say the least astonishing, of two judges in the context of the Yuka trial, two former managers of companies in the agri-food sector. Sentenced to pay 95,000 euros in damages to the charcuterie players, to remove the petition from the application and to no longer mention the “probable carcinogenic” nature of nitrites, Yuka appealed against these decisions which they did not hesitate to describe as “gag procedures” in their press release.

A recognition by justice of the social utility of the Yuka score?

But this month of June 2023 came to conclude a series of victories for Yuka on appeal for these same three cases. The Limoges, Aix-en-Provence and then Paris Court of Appeals all overturned the convictions at first instance, ending two years of legal proceedings in favor of Yuka against the three charcuterie players.

While the Fédération des Industriels Charcutiers (FICT) notably accused Yuka of misleading consumers on the basis of an “arbitrary” rating system, the Paris Court of Appeal recalled that Yuka’s rating algorithm was based on various criteria set out on their site and based on scientific opinions: the Nutri-Score, whose algorithm is publicly available, and the conclusions of the ANSES report on the risk associated with nitro additives. To support their decision, the Paris Court of Appeal recalled that Yuka’s information actions were protected by freedom of expression: ” (…) any activity, even for commercial purposes, having as its purpose the information of third parties and the dissemination of opinions is protected by the freedom of expression “, can we read in the court decision rendered on June 7th.

A legal victory that recognizes subjectivity, but underlines the legitimacy of these new tools at the service of consumers. Because if we can disagree with the criteria used by Yuka’s scoring algorithm, it is difficult to deny the role of the application in informing citizens: from discussions around the criteria of its score to the media coverage of disputes between the company and the delicatessen lobby on additives, the application will have made it possible to highlight subjects hitherto little known to most consumers, and to open up debates in the public interest.

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