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Danone removes NutriScore from products

Following an algorithm update that gives some of its sweetened drinks a worse score, Danone has removed the front-of-pack label, NutriScore, from all of its products – putting profit before public health, say campaigners.

After an 18-month period of investigation, NutriScore’s Scientific Committee proposed several changes to how the scores are calculated, some of which now affect Danone and other food companies. Milk-based drinks, fermented milk-based drinks and vegetable drinks are now included in the category of beverages. Previously they were classified in the general food category like yoghurts, which meant their sweetened forms had a more favourable score.

“This situation was not in line with public health recommendations,” Serge Hercberg, professor of nutrition at Université Paris, who led the team of researchers that created NutriScore, told Ingredients Network.

NutriScore no more

The reclassification has decreased the NutriScore rating for Danone’s drinkable yoghurts. The leading food company has since announced that it intends to gradually withdraw the NutriScore label from its products in this category. Following Committee’s findings and update, a NutriScore of D or E may seem unattractive for products with a marked health positioning, even if they may contain sugar levels close to those of sodas.

“We have always supported consistent science-based, interpretive nutrition labelling and were pioneers in displaying, on a voluntary basis, the NutriScore on our packaging in Europe,” a spokesperson from Danone, said.

“However, we do not agree with the revision of the algorithm, which switches drinkable dairy and plant-based alternatives into the beverage category,” the spokesperson says. “This development gives an erroneous view of the nutritional and functional quality of drinkable dairy and plant-based products, not in line with food based dietary guidelines in Europe,” Danone’s spokesperson adds.

Danone believes this leads to confusion among consumers with different NutriScore scoring for products with similar nutritional purposes in diets that come in a different format.

Given this “major inconsistency”, Danone’s spokesperson said the company will gradually remove the NutriScore from its dairy and plant-based drinkable products, starting from September 2024. “We are also studying the impact of this withdrawal on our other product references and are working with all stakeholders in each market where we operate to identify the best solution.”

Some yoghurt drinks contain as much sugar as soda

According to Hercberg, the new classification seeks to achieve public health objectives by scoring products based on their sugar content. “This is important because the sugar content of these drinks produced by Danone – yoghurt drinks, sweetened milk drinks (flavoured milk) and plant-based drinks (including soya, almond, oat and rice drinks) – varies considerably between sugar-free versions of the product and very sweet versions.”

Some of these products may contain up to 10 to 13g of sugar per 100ml, equivalent to soft drinks. However, they were classified as A or B using the calculation method for general foods that was initially used. In the beverages category, the sweetest soft drinks, which contain the same quantities of sugar as drinking yoghurts or other sweetened vegetable drinks, are classified as E.

“Contrary to what Danone says, it’s not drinking yoghurts or plant-based drinks that are being penalised by the update of NutriScore,” Hercberg says. “It’s actually the sweetened forms of these products that have had their NutriScore downgraded,” Hercberg adds.

With the updated NutriScore, versions of these products with little or no added sugar (less than 4%) are still well classified as green/B. Only the sweetened forms of drinking yoghurts and vegetable drinks are classified as C, D or E, depending on their sugar content, varying from 5 grams to almost 13 grams of sugar per 100ml.

For Danone, however, they are calling for a new European-wide nutritional information system. “We call for the adoption, at the EU level, of a harmonised interpretative nutritional information system benefitting all European consumers,” the spokesperson said.

In line with its health compass and Danone Impact Journey targets, the company says it is committed to improving its products’ recipes and offering its consumers transparent information on its products’ nutritional profile. “We are open to further dialogue and collaboration to promote healthy food choices,” Danone’s spokesperson adds.

Hercberg: ‘We expected better from a company like Danone’

“We expected better from a company like Danone, which until recently campaigned to make NutriScore mandatory in Europe until the update (quite rightly) affected some of its flagship products,” says Hercberg.

“The decision to withdraw the NutriScore shows that Danone, contrary to the virtuous image it is trying to project, is in fact focusing primarily on its commercial and marketing interests and not on the health of consumers. The attitude of Danone is regrettable and very disappointing on the part of a company that has for several years cultivated an image of a food group with a strong social commitment and that has until now claimed to place ‘health for all through food’ at the heart of its image as a responsible company,” he added.