A study published this Thursday confirms, unsurprisingly, that foods with the lowest Nutri-Score scores are associated with a greater risk of mortality.
Orienting consumers towards healthier food choices is an important issue for the prevention of cancers and other chronic diseases. Also, for several years, some countries have opted for the implementation of simplified labelling. Called "Nutri-Score", the latter reflects the nutritional quality of food. In France, the logo was officially adopted three years ago as part of the health system modernization law.
The principle is simple:letters, from A to E, allow consumers to see whether the products concerned are healthy or not. These scores are assigned based on the FSAm-NPS (Food Standards Agency nutrient profiling system) score. Roughly, this takes into account, for 100 grams of product, the content of nutrients and foods to favor (fibre, proteins, fruits and vegetables), and the content of nutrients to limit (energy, saturated fatty acids, sugars, salt ).
After calculation, the score obtained by a product is used to assign it a letter and a color. You will then understand that the most nutritionally favorable products are classified A (green). Conversely, the least nutritionally favorable products are classified E (red).
But can we really trust this labeling? To find out, researchers from the Epidemiology and Statistics Research Center-University of Paris have looked into the link between the nutritional quality of food and mortality. To do so, they recorded and analyzed the food choices of more than 500,000 people of ten European countries between 1992 and 2015.
This work, published in the Bristish Medical Journal (BMJ), found that participants who ate on average more foods ranked lower on the Nutri-Score had increased mortality (total mortality and mortality from cancer and diseases of the circulatory, respiratory and digestive systems). These results were still significant after taking into account a large number of socio-demographic and lifestyle factors.
"People who consume foods of lower nutritional quality will have an increased mortality of approximately 7% “, specifies Mélanie Deschazaux, co-author of the study at the microphone of Europe 1.
For Mathilde Touvier, researcher at inserm, this study "valid" the relevance of this score and this logo "in the context of public health policies aimed at directing consumers towards foods of better nutritional quality".
