"TheFoodProfiler", a Nutrient Profiling system to restrict the use of nutrition and health claims to foods with desirable nutrient profiles

Abstract

The EU regulation 1924/2006 states that foods must comply with specific nutrient profiles in order to bear nutrition or health claims. Defining a system which complies with EU requirements for simplicity and consistency is a difficult task. We propose an adaptation of a previously published system, Nutrimap®, which discriminates foods according to their ability to either unbalance or re-balance the overall diet. This new tool, called "TheFoodProfiler", considers up to 5 nutrients, 4 of them being common to all foods (total fats, trans + saturated fats, added sugars, added sodium), the fifth one depending on the food product (it has to be chosen among calcium, fibres, iron and polyunsaturated fats). An exception was however made for the category oils & fats for which only two criteria, among the common ones, are considered: SFA+TFA and sodium. Each nutrient is affected with a score depending on its amount in 100 kcal, relatively to the European recommendations and intakes. Foods are thus characterized by their nutritional assets and weaknesses. Eligibility to claims requires to have more than 50% of assets and less than 50% of weaknesses. This leads to give access to claims for approximately 60% of the foods of the French composition table, as an example, with more than 90% of fruits and vegetables and less than 15% of sugar-rich and composite foods category. Results on a selection of foods are given. © Lavoisier.