What you need to know about the Nutri-score, which more than 300 scientists and health professionals want to make mandatory

A report by more than 300 scientists and health professionals is published Thursday, May 11 to ask Europe to make the Nutri-score compulsory. Nth episode of an incredible story. For those who don’t know it, it’s the small colored logo that classifies foods from A to E, from green to red, from more to less virtuous.

It is he who allows you to make the right choice between two boxes of cereals at the supermarket. And if the scientists leave, or rather go back to fight, it is because for years the industrialists have been trying to prevent it from putting my two cents where there is the dose of fat and sugar. However, in 2014, a report submitted to the government recommended the creation of a single logo. It took until 2017 for the Nutri-score to be worn on the baptismal font by three ministers: those of Health, Agriculture and Finance.

Battles won but still no war

However, it is still not mandatory. And many manufacturers continue to resist. Ferrero, Lactalis, Coca-Cola, Mars or Unilever ban it from their packaging. Three years ago, when the European Commission announced that it was going to choose a single, mandatory nutritional logo for all European countries, the Nutri-score was seen as the best candidate. However, this was without taking into account the firm opposition of Italy, according to which it would be the fruit of a plot intended to attack the parmesan, the gorgonzola and the salami. Not to mention also the return of lobbies and their battery of incomprehensible counter-logos, which could well topple the European Commission, whose decision has been awaited since the end of 2022.