Editor’s note: The following is a guest post by Cara Liebrock, CEO of Perfect Snacks. Opinions are the author's own.
There are wearables, or apps, for tracking most everything when it comes to health and wellness: sleep habits, fitness goals, meals and nutrition, and more. All of these can be tailored to suit a person’s specific needs, but there’s one area that lacks the personalization that the modern day consumer craves: food rating algorithms. These programs typically apply a universal, one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to generating a food item’s nutritional value, which can cause problems.
More nutritional data is available to consumers than ever, but the technology and algorithms that score it have an oversimplified interpretation of what is considered “good” and “bad.” For example, consumers today can scan a barcode of a food item they know fits within their nutrition goals, and be served back a score that causes concern.
These algorithmic nutritional ratings, designed with the goal to offer more clarity behind the ingredients in food, can actually deliver confusion, with binary scores that can penalize practical, convenient, and genuinely healthy food choices. These scores ignore the context behind terms like “processed” or “added sugar,” vilifying them when there are many cases that prove that options that are not ultraprocessed, or have added sugar from natural sources as opposed to refined sugar, can be healthy choices for people.
In their current form, these algorithmic ratings actually cause harm by forcing a black-and-white mindset that makes most food options seem like a bad choice or even inherently unhealthy – even if those options are made with ingredients widely considered to be good for you. Currently, the technology driving these nutritional scores just hasn't evolved to the point where it can account for each person's deeply individualized health, nutritional baseline and goals.
Context is essential when it comes to understanding the nutritional value of food, and without it comes the risk of consumers losing confidence in their options, especially among packaged foods, which tend to be the most convenient and practical options for those with busy schedules or active lifestyles.
Learning to interpret the intricacies of nutrition scores and nutrition labels takes a certain level of what I like to call food fluency. It takes nuance to understand what is truly beneficial to individual diets. A food item that gets a “bad” score may be in line with an endurance athlete’s macro goals, or ideal for another person who is managing their blood sugar levels or trying to lose weight.
Take, for example, the ingredient label “added sugars.” Even natural sweeteners, like organic honey and maple syrup, are considered “added sugars” when added as an ingredient. Though they’re made from real, natural sources, the very fact that they’re added to a food product earns them a label that turns consumers away. However, both honey and maple syrup have a lower glycemic index than refined sugar, and when combined with other ingredients like protein, fiber and fat they can be a part of a low-GI diet and supply steadier energy throughout the day, with a slower rise in blood glucose levels. When you consider how these ingredients are used, you get a clearer picture of their benefits beyond their label.
“Processed” is another term that is automatically associated with a negative connotation when it’s related to food. Even foods that are good for you, like plain yogurt and whole grain bread, are considered to be processed. Processed foods include any food that has been changed while being prepared – which most of us eat on a daily basis, in some shape or form. There are certainly levels to processed foods which moves them up or down on the health scale, but the general term covers a wide range that can feed negatively into algorithmic food scores.
It’s clear that Americans are really seeking transparency in their food choices: the majority (63%) of Americans say that they avoid eating food products that contain ingredients they don’t recognize, according to a survey run by the Harris Poll on behalf of Perfect Bar. They’re serious about learning more about the ingredients that make up their food, but the information that is out there, from algorithmic nutrition ratings to unclear ingredient sources from brands, lacks essential context to make it understandable and useful to their everyday lives and food choices.
This desire for food fluency shouldn't be a burden to consumers alone; it’s up to food brands and manufacturers as well to restore confidence in the ingredients they use, and to offer transparency and education around ingredient quality and sourcing. And maybe one day, nutritional and food rating algorithms will be able to become as nuanced as the nutritional baselines and health goals of the people that use them.
