Walking through a supermarket these days, you might get the impression that the food industry has collectively trained to become lifestyle coaches. High-protein bars, high-fiber cereals, vitamin-enriched drinks, and reduced-sugar snacks are everywhere. Even cookies now seem to offer health benefits. You could almost forget that they are still just cookies.
The industry has learned a clever trick. It hasn't necessarily learned how to make healthier food, but rather how to calculate health. Less sugar earns points, as does extra protein. If a manufacturer then adds some fiber and vitamins and lowers the saturated fat content, a favorable score or an appealing claim might well appear on the front of the package. The ingredient list on the back, however, is often far less impressive.
Proteins, fiber, and vitamins are, of course, important. Reducing sugar can certainly be an improvement, too. Yet food is more than just the sum of its individual components. An apple isn't healthy solely because it contains fructose, fiber, and vitamin C; its natural structure also determines how you eat it, how quickly you digest it, and how full it makes you feel. When roughly the same ingredients are put into a drink, your body faces a completely different task.
During my studies in food technology, I learned how to break food down into measurable components. That is useful, but this perspective has also created a blind spot. Naturally, whatever is easily measurable receives the most attention. Meanwhile, the food's structure, the degree of processing, and the impact on our eating behavior easily fade into the background. As a result, a manufacturer can improve a product to suit the assessment model without it actually becoming a truly wholesome food. It is like a student who learns exactly what he needs to know for the exam, without having understood anything of the lesson.
To me, Nutri-Score is the clearest example of what goes wrong when we try to reduce health to a mathematical formula. The system evaluates a few measurable components but overlooks a significant part of how food actually affects us. Manufacturers can tweak their recipes to secure a more favorable letter grade, even while the product remains highly processed. This allows an industrial product to present itself as a healthy choice with a green score, whereas unpackaged, whole foods barely participate in this numbers game. Consequently, Nutri-Score doesn't help us view food more effectively; instead, it primarily teaches the industry how to achieve a better score.
Perhaps, then, we should stop asking so often which healthy ingredient has been added to a product. It is more interesting to consider what was lost during production and why the product needs a health claim in the first place. Broccoli doesn't need to advertise that it is rich in fiber. An egg doesn't need to shout in big letters that it contains protein. Real food is often remarkably bad at marketing.
The nutritional information table rarely lies, but it doesn't tell the whole story, either. The industry has mainly learned to improve the specific aspects we have chosen to measure. In doing so, it hasn't necessarily learned to produce healthier food, but rather how to "calculate" health. That doesn't actually make anyone healthier.
Source : Ralph Moorman - Newsletter Hormoonfactor