🎉 Auto congratulations mode ON : our approach aligning ultra-processing and nutritional value of food products is picking up pace, at last!

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An excellent new study demonstrated how analizing a food product based combining 2 key criteria can be used to more accurately identify less healthy foods for policy recommendation:

(i) its 𝗻𝘂𝘁𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘃𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 (𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺) to penalize those high in Fat, Salt, Sugar)

AND

(ii) whether degree of 𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗿𝗮-𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴  (𝗡𝗢𝗩𝗔) / 𝗮𝗱𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀

🥥Want more articles breaking down the science behind our food? Visit the GoCoCo blog for expert-backed pieces on nutrition, labeling, and public health.

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It's exactly the philosophy and standards we used to create the algorithm of our GoCoCo food scoring app 5 years ago!

Thank you Juan for helping us create the algorithm. We are delighted  to see that, instead of opposing 2 approaches (Nutritional value vs. degree of Processing), which are in fact 2 sides of the same coin, this double-lense approach now starts to gain momentum. 👏

📑 Full paper here.

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📲 So while we wait for regulation updates, we consumers can use the GoCoCo food scanning app to help make informed choices and select suggested healthier alternatives. The scoring method not only considers both ultra-processing (UPF) & "high in fat/sugar/salt" (HFSS) approaches, but also a scale, because neither UPF nor HFFS standards are binary criteria.

📉 Our scoring criteria includes:

(𝗶) 𝗪𝗛𝗢,

(𝗶𝗶) 𝗡𝗢𝗩𝗔 (𝗨𝗣𝗙)

(𝗶𝗶𝗶) 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗻 (𝗛𝗙𝗙𝗦) 𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴.

Learn more here.

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Much of the confusion around UPFs stems not just from marketing, but from how we justify our choices. Our article Are we confused or are we deceiving ourselves with ultra-processed foods? explores the psychology behind this disconnect.

Feel free to comment, agree, disagree, provide further details on this topic here.

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