European Union countries and Australia have rolled out front-of-package nutrient profiling. Color-coding or star rankings let shoppers make quick choices about healthy foods.
Imagine a world where food on grocery store shelves is ranked by its healthiness, with simple, research-backed scores. In some countries, that world already exists.
Nutrient profiling systems, or NPSs, support clear front-of-package labels that assess food quality based on nutrient content. Nutri-Score in France is a rainbow-colored system grading foods from A to E. Health Star Rating in Australia is a five-star system rating foods in half-star increments. And the Traffic Light System in the U.K. labels nutrient levels as green, yellow or red.
In contrast, the U.S. lacks a front-of-package ranking system for food. Food Compass was recently developed out of Tufts University to help address this gap and shortcomings in other systems. But it uses nutritional information not currently available for most foods and consumers.
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