Article pp.413-422 du Vol.27 n°6 (2007)

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doi:10.3166/sda.27.413-422 SCIENCES DES ALIMENTS, 27(2007) 413-422

SHORT COMMUNICATION

“TheFoodProfiler”, a Nutrient Profiling system to restrict the use of nutrition and health claims

to foods with desirable nutrient profiles

E. Labouze^1*, C. Goffi¹, V. Azaïs-Braesco²

RÉSUMÉ

« The FoodProFiler », un système de profilage nutritionnel pour limiter l’utilisation d’allégations aux aliments au profil nutritionnel désirable La récente réglementation européenne 1924/2006 stipule que seuls les aliments présentant un profil nutritionnel spécifique pourront avoir accès à des allégations nutritionnelles ou de santé. La définition d’un système de profilage nutritionnel répondant aux exigences réglementaires en termes de simplicité, d’efficacité et de cohérence avec l’existant est un exercice diffi- cile. Nous proposons ici un système dérivé d’un outil déjà publié, Nutrimap^®, qui discrimine les différents aliments en fonction de leur potentiel à ré-équili- brer ou à déséquilibrer l’ensemble du régime. Ce nouvel outil, appelé

« TheFoodProfiler » considère un maximum de 5 nutriments, parmi lesquels 4 sont communs à tous les aliments (les matières grasses totales, la somme acides gras trans + acides gras saturés, le sel et le sucre ajoutés). Une exception est faite pour la catégorie « huiles & graisses » qui ne considère que 2 critères (AGS + AGT et sodium). La nature du dernier nutriment dépend de l’aliment et est à choisir parmi les suivants : calcium, fibres, acides gras polyinsaturés ou fer. Chaque nutriment est affecté d’une note qui dépend de sa quantité dans 100 kcal du produit, relativement d’une part aux recommandations et d’autre part aux apports réels, au niveau européen. Les aliments sont ainsi caractérisés par leurs atouts et leurs faiblesses nutritionnelles ; l’accès aux allégations pour un aliment implique qu’il pré- sente plus de 50 % de qualités et moins de 50 % de défauts nutritionnels.

Sur les 800 aliments de la table de composition française, cela conduit à donner accès aux allégations à 60 % des aliments environ, plus de 90 % des fruits, légumes et noix étant éligibles pour moins de 15 % des produits composés ou riches en sucre. Des exemples précis sont donnés sur une sélection de produits. « TheFoodProfiler » fournit une évaluation cohérente du profil nutritionnel par une méthode répondant aux nombreuses exigences du règlement, notamment celle de la simplicité et de la transparence,

1. BIO Intelligence Service, 1, rue Berthelot, 94200 Ivry-sur-Seine, France 2. VAB-nutrition, 47, allée des Noyers, 63122 Ceyrat, France

* Correspondence: eric.labouze@biois.com SDA27_6.book Page 413 Lundi, 18. août 2008 4:26 16

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414 Sci. Aliments 27(6), 2007 E. Labouze et al.

comme en témoignent les simulations réalisables sur le site

« TheFoodProfiler.com ».

Mots clés

profil nutritionnel, aliment, réglementation européenne, allégation nutrition et de santé.

SUMMARY

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 un- balance or re-balance the overall diet. This new tool, called “TheFoodPro- filer”, 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.

Keywords

nutrient profiling, food,European regulation, health and nutrition claim.

1 – INTRODUCTION

The recent EU regulation on nutrition and health claims (EU, 2006) states that, in order to bear nutrition or health claims, foods must comply with specific nutrient profiles in order to avoid a situation where claims mask the overall nutritional status of a food product, which could mislead consumers when trying to make healthy choices in the context of a balanced diet. The EU regulation raises some critical points regarding the elaboration of such systems:

(i) should nutrient profiles be adapted to food categories?

(ii) which nutrients should be taken into account and what should be the balance between them?

SDA27_6.book Page 414 Lundi, 18. août 2008 4:26 16

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“TheFoodProfiler”, a nutrient profiling system for regulatory purposes 415

(iii) should nutrient profiles be set up on the basis of weight, energy or portion size?

(iv) how should the final calculation be performed?

An additional issue concerns the feasibility of the proposed system which should be usable and meaningful for the whole Europe, simple for all stakeholders and should both protect the consumer and enable valorisation of nutritional improvements or innovations by the food industry.

Building such a system is not an easy task and numerous tools have been and are currently still being proposed, some of them well before this regulation, either by academic scientists, national agencies or private stakeholders (partly reviewed in Azais-Braesco et al., 2006). Among the ones which come from national authorities or are published in peer-reviewed journals, one could for example refer to:

– the tool elaborated by the British Food Standards Agency (FSA), an

“across the board” scoring system which includes both nutrients to restrict and nutrients to favour, with some compensation between them¹. This system has been prepared for regulating the marketing of foods to children and might thus not be fully adapted to the objectives of the EU regulation.

– the system elaborated by the French Food Safety Agency (AFSSA) which is currently been validated². It shares numerous basic principles with the FSA one (scoring, across the board) but does not compensate between nutrient and uses two reference bases. The final classification of foods and eligibility to claims is thus significantly different from the FSA-generated one.

– the food company Unilever has proposed another type of system, based on independent thresholds and considering only nutrients to restrict. It is an

“across the board” system, although it proposes that some food categories can be exempted (Nijman et al., 2007).

This list is by no means exhaustive and numerous other systems exist. We have recently proposed an innovative and science-based nutrient profiling system, Nutrimap^®, which discriminates foods according to their ability to either un-balance or re-balance the overall diet (Labouze, 2006; 2007). Although this tool has proven its efficiency in categorising foods, it is probably not fully adapted to the regulatory demands, namely for simplicity of use. We thus built a simplified tool, following the major requirements of the regulation. It is adapted from Nutrimap^® and keeps its key concept which is to classify foods through their ability to participate in filling the gaps between the current dietary intakes of the population and the dietary recommendations provided by Public Health authorities.

1.1 Methodology: description and rationale

TheFoodProfiler is a simplified version of the more elaborated nutrient profiling tool that we have already published under the name “Nutrimap”. Details and developed argumentation about the choices that have been made can be found in the corresponding publication (Labouze et al., 2007), as well as a com-

1. Available at http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/nutprofr.pdf (consulted december 2007) 2. Report is pending and will be available on the AFSSA web-site at www.afssa.fr

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parison with other profiling systems. TheFoodProfiler first considers the nutrients whose intakes are to be limited. As stated in the regulation, these are sodium, added sugars, total fats, saturated fatty acids (FA) and trans FA. We have however chosen to combine the latest two as a single criteria. Indeed, saturated and trans FA are both known to increase the risk for cardiovascular diseases but levels of trans FA are not easily available for numerous food items and debates are still existing as to the relative deleterious effect of naturally occurring and technologically formed trans-FA. Moreover, the Transfair study (Hulshof, 1999) concluded that the current trans FA intakes in most European countries are less than 2% of energy and that the highest benefits would be to reduce both saturated and trans FA. The four nutrients were thus taken into account for each food, whatever its category. An exception was however made for products which are extremely rich in lipids, such as oils & fats for which there is little interest to discuss total fats (not discriminative) or sugars (virtually not present). For this food group, only two criteria are considered: SFA+TFA and sodium. This category can be defined as the foods for which more than 90% of energy are brought by lipids. This nutrient-based definition is simple, non ambiguous and avoid difficulties in defining the category.

However, limiting the nutrient profile of a food only to the nutrients to be restricted does not seem consistent with another statement of the regulation, saying that “the overall nutritional composition of the food and the presence of nutrients that have been scientifically recognised as having an effect on health should be taken into account”. To comply with this without adding too much complexity, we have included a list of four other nutrients (calcium, iron, fibre, poly-unsaturated FA), whose intake should be enhanced, among which only one can be and should be chosen. The selection of this additional nutrient is left to the user’s choice, which avoids the difficult task of pre-defining food categories. As a matter of fact, most of the time the chosen nutrient will correspond to the characteristic one of each food group (eg calcium for dairy products, iron for meat products, …). Because of the specific scoring system (see below), the fact that the choice of this additional nutrient is compulsory may allow to better discriminate between products (eg a dairy product whose calcium content is relatively low will be penalised) and may also participate in disqualifying foods which does not contain any of these positive nutrients.

Each food is thus characterized by three to five nutrients. Each of these nutrients is then, as in the original Nutrimap^®tool, scored between –1 and +1, according to its content in 100 kcal of the studied food. When considering a nutrient whose intake is to be limited and if this content is higher than the current intake in the population, the score will be -1 because the food worsens the current situation for this nutrient and thus has an un-balancing effect; if the content is lower than the recommended amount, meaning that the food will re- balance the whole diet for this nutrient, the score is set at +1; if the amount of the nutrient is between the recommendation and the current intake, the score will be linearly and proportionally defined between –1 and +1. Calculations are reversed for additional nutrients that have to be promoted. The negative scores (nutritional weaknesses of the food) and positive ones (nutritional assets) are then separately summed, without compensation, and these two scores charac- terise the nutritional profile of the food. The figures used to define the recommended values are issued from the Eurodiet project (Ferro-Luzzi, 2001) and the current nutrient intakes have been evaluated at the European level through data

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from individual national surveys of 12 European countries, representing 75% of the EU27 population (summarised in Elmadfa et al., 2005).

Table 1

Reference values taken into account in theFoodProfiler.

(Valeurs de références utilisées dans “TheFoodProfiler”).

These procedures are very consistent with some requirements of the regulation, which states that nutrient profiles should take into account “the role and importance of the food and the contribution to the diet of the population”.

The final step, which is more a matter of management than of assessment, is to define thresholds for the nutritional scores defined above. We propose that, to be eligible for a nutrition or health claim, a food should simultaneously have less than 50% of nutritional weaknesses (ie, when 5 nutrients are considered, a negative score whose absolute value is below 2.5) and more than 50% of nutritional assets (a positive score above 2.5) and so more assets than weaknesses. There is thus no compensation between the assets and the weaknesses of the food, and both are taken into account to decide about eligibility of a food. These choices, which can be challenged according to one’s perception of what is a food of “good” or “bad” nutritional value, seem however quite reasonable and promote foods with an acceptable balance between nutritional assets and weaknesses.

However, when testing the system on more than 700 food items, we saw that a lot of sugary products were categorised as eligible for claims, to an extent which did not fit with the general perception of healthy foods. This was probably because these products have little or no sodium nor fats (and thus no saturated or trans FA) and were artificially favoured by positive scores for these nutrients. We thus decided to establish an “added sugar” filter, which stipulates that a serving should not bring more than 12.5 g of sugars. If a food does not comply with this threshold, it is declared non eligible and does not go further in the evaluation. This value of 12.5 g comes from the Eurodiet recommendations (Ferro-Luzzi, 2001) which state that added sugars should not represent more than 10% of the daily energy (2000 kcal) and that sugary products should not be eaten more often than four times a day. Although the reason of the limitation

Nutrients whose intake should be restricted

Nutrients whose intake should be enhanced Total

fats

SFA + TFA

Added sugars

Added

sodium Calcium Iron PUFA Fibres Nutritional reference values

(% en = % of total energy; energy requirement : 2000 kcal per day)

Unit % en % en % en mg/

100 kcal mg/

100 kcal % en g/100 kcal Nutritional

Guidelines 35.0 12 12.0 120 40 0.8 7 1.3

Current intake

(UE 27) 36.4 14.3 13.2 155.9 39 0.6 5.7 0.9

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to 4 eating occasions for sugary products (prevention of tooth decay) may not seem fully appropriate here, the number remains consistent with the consensual idea that some products should not be consumed at a high frequency. Moreo- ver, this decision rebalances the weight affected to sugars, relatively to fats, which are already taken into account twice by considering total fats and SFA+TFA, and helps to address the issue of serving.

2 – RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

We tested the system on a series of 780 food items, representative of each food group. The nutritional data came from composition tables of the CIQUAL (2002). All together, 62 % of the foods were classified as eligible for claims.

Although the system does not consider categories, it is interesting to see how the various food groups specificities are taken into account (table 2).

Table 2

Eligibility to claims of foods evaluated through “TheFoodProfiler”.

(Accès aux allégations évalué avec « TheFoodProfiler »).

Some detailed results are shown on table 3 and other profiling can be done on the web site “TheFoodProfiler.com”, on which any kind of simulation can be performed. Basically, most fruits & vegetables are found eligible, except when too much sugar is added, such as in fruit drinks or fruits canned in syrup. Fats seem too largely positioned as eligible, yet this may be partly due to the CIQUAL selection of products, which mostly favours vegetable oils. For other food groups, eligibility depends on the composition, and this is quite consistent with the basic principle of a healthy diet which should balance foods from all food groups. The food group for which the number of non-eligible products is the highest is the “other products” category, which mostly consists in elaborated products (sugary foods, composite dishes, ...). These products however often offer a wide range of formulation opportunities or recipes, and this should

Number tested of food products

Percentage of eligible foods

Dairy products 134 37%

Fish products 104 94%

Meat and eggs 147 65%

Others 61 31%

Starchy foods 95 74%

Fats 32 75%

Fruits & vegetables + nuts 206 93%

Total 779 70%

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encourage food manufacturers to modify their usual practices to improve the overall nutritional value and possibly to reach thresholds for eligibility. A pizza, for example, can fall on either side of the cut-off point according to its recipe.

Effort such as lowering salt, increasing the amount of tomato sauce and vegetables, choosing a ham variety with less fat, introducing some whole wheat flour in a thicker crust may allow an evolution from a non-eligible to an eligible status that could then be promoted, as shown on table 3.

The regulation stipulates that nutrition claims (as opposed to health claims) will be allowed for food products which have only one nutrient leading them to exceed the profile. This condition is often understood as promoting pure thresholds systems as the only ones able to comply with. We have a different opi- nion since it is quite possible in scoring systems, including the one of TheFoodProfiler, to neutralise the most penalising nutrient and thus to take this condition fully into account. For example, chocolate breakfast cereals “coco- pops”, which are not eligible because of an excessive sugar content, would become eligible for a nutritional claim if this nutrient is omitted in the profiling.

Similarly, if the criteria “total fats” is omitted, a beef burger containing 20% of fats would be allowed to claim on its vitamin B12 content, if the quantities are adequate.

We believe that “TheFoodProfiler” can be a very effective and efficient tool to define the nutrient profile of foods in the frame of the EU regulation. It takes into consideration most, if not all of the regulation’s requirements, especially when it comes to “the different categories of foods” and the place and role of these foods in the overall diet should be taken into account and to “the various dietary habits and consumption patterns existing in the Member States” or to the answers to the questions raised in the regulation (see introduction): “The- FoodProfiler” mostly considers all foods with similar criteria and thresholds (for fats, sodium and sugar), but pays attention to the characteristics of the major food groups by promoting calcium, fibres, iron and PUFAs. It takes into account a limited number of nutrients, enabling virtually any stakeholder to provide the necessary data with limited cost and difficulty. However it manages to provide a classification of foods between “eligible” and “non eligible” with a high sensitivity, including for closely related products, while giving incentives to food manufacturers to improve their products. Indeed, innovations leading to significant nutritional improvements would be opened to valorisation through consumer communication, although some products, because of their image and/or intrinsic nutritional composition, will remain in the domain of indulgence and pleasure. It combines an energy basis with a concern for portion size, especially for sugar-rich products, which may potentially encourage manufacturers to propose smaller portions for sugary foods. The difficulty to agree on portion size at the European level remains, but was not our scope here. And finally, it proposes a simple scoring system which allows for some flexibility while avoi- ding unsatisfactory direct compensations of nutritional weaknesses by assets.

In conclusion, we propose “TheFoodProfiler” as a science-based tool to determine the nutrient profile of food products and thus their eligibility to claim.

This tool, which is very consistent with the objectives and requirements of the EU regulation, is also extremely simple to use, fully transparent and usable for anyone, especially through the web site “TheFoodProfiler.com”.

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Table 3 Eligibility to health and nutrition claims of a selection of foods, according to “TheFoodProfiler” system. (Accès aux allégations pour une sélection d’aliments, selon « TheFoodProfiler »).*Recipe 1 (g): white flour 250, water 150, salt 4, sugar 10, sunflower oil 10, tomato 200, salted olives 30, mushrooms 50, emmenthal 150, anchovies 50; recipe 2 (g): whole flour 200, white flour 200, water 280, salt 4, tomato 200, onion 200, olive oil 10, mushrooms 150, eggplant 150, ham 100. Food productServingAdded sugarsAdded sodiumTotal fatSat + trans fatAdditional nutrientTotal scoreEligibility for claimsgg/100 gg/servingscoremg/100 gscoreg/100 gscoreg/100 gscorechoicesee table1scoreAssetsDefaults Semi-skimmed milk2500.00.01.00.01.01.61.01.2– 1.0calcium110.01.04.0– 1.0YES Cottage cheese, plain500.00.01.0300.0– 1.04.3– 1.02.5– 1.0calcium127.01.02.0– 3.0NO Fromage frais, plain1250.10.11.00.01.08.0– 1.05.6– 1.0calcium110.01.03.0– 2.0YES Whole milk yogurt, fruit12512.615.8excess0.01.03.01.02.1– 1.0calcium122.01.03.0– 2.0excess sugars Yogurt, low fat, fruit1258.310.4–1.00.01.01.11.00.81.0calcium140.01.04.0– 1.0YES Ice cream, dairy10013.513.5excess0.01.09.8– 1.06.9– 1.0calcium100.01.02.0– 3.0excess sugars Orange juice2500.00.01.00.01.00.11.00.01.0fibres0.1– 1.04.0– 1.0YES Walnuts300.00.01.00.01.068.5– 1.05.61.0agpi47.51.04.0– 1.0YES Grapes1500.00.01.00.01.00.11.00.01.0fibres0.70.34.30.0YES Pears, canned in syrup10013.213.2excess0.01.00.01.00.01.0fibres1.11.04.0– 1.0excess sugars Vegetable soup, 2505.112.8excess430.0– 1.00.61.00.01.0fibres1.51.03.0– 2.0excess sugars Fruit juice drink2505.914.8excess8.01.00.01.00.01.0fibres0.1– 1.03.0– 2.0excess sugars Potato crisps300.70.21.0800.0– 0.734.2– 1.014.0– 1.0agpi5.01.02.0– 2.7NO White bread502.91.51.0590.0– 1.02.01.00.51.0calcium172.01.04.0– 1.0YES Croissants455.32.41.0419.01.019.7– 1.011.3– 1.0fibres1.6– 1.02.0– 3.0NO Coco Pops3042.012.6excess450.01.02.51.01.01.0fer7.91.04.0– 1.0excess sugars Corn Flakes308.22.51.01000.0– 1.00.91.00.21.0fer7.91.04.0– 1.0YES SDA27_6.book Page 420 Lundi, 18. août 2008 4:26 16

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© Lavoisier – La photocopie non autorisée est un délit Digestive biscuits3013.64.11.0600.00.520.3– 1.010.0– 1.0fer3.2– 0.11.5– 2.1NO Beans in tomato sauce2005.911.8– 1.0530.0– 1.00.61.00.11.0fibres3.71.03.0– 2.0YES Chicken breast, grilled 1000.00.01.055.01.02.21.00.61.0fer0.4– 1.04.0– 1.0YES Pork sausages1001.61.61.01070.0– 1.023.9– 1.08.6– 1.0agpi3.51.02.0– 3.0NO Beef bourguignonne1000.00.01.0106.01.08.2– 1.03.4– 1.0fer1.71.03.0– 2.0YES Liver, ox, stewed1000.00.01.0110.01.09.5– 1.03.5– 1.0fer7.81.03.0– 2.0YES ground beef, 10% fat1000.00.01.078.01.012.8– 1.05.4– 1.0fer2.71.03.0– 2.0YES ground beef, 20% fat1000.00.01.082.01.025.0– 1.010.5– 1.0fer2.20.22.2– 2.0NO Tuna canned in oil, 500.00.01.0290.0– 0.99.0– 1.01.71.0fer1.61.03.0– 1.9YES Mackerel, smoked1000.00.01.0384.00.424.3– 1.04.9– 1.0agpi5.01.02.4– 2.0NO Mackerel, baked 1000.00.01.090.01.020.9– 1.04.9– 1.0agpi5.21.03.0– 2.0YES Olive oil100.00.01.00.01.099.9– 1.014.3– 1.0agpi8.21.02.0– 1.0YES Butter100.60.11.0606.01.082.2– 1.055.0– 1.0agpi2.8– 1.01.0– 2.0YES Mayonnaise101.30.11.0450.01.075.6– 1.012.7– 1.0agpi42.41.02.0– 1.0YES Chocolate bar5066.233.1excess150.01.018.31.010.8– 1.0fibres0.4– 1.02.0– 3.0excess sugars Cola25010.927.3excess5.01.00.01.00.01.0fibres0.0– 1.03.0– 2.0excess sugars Cola, diet2500.00.01.05.0– 1.00.01.00.01.0calcium6.01.04.0– 1.0YES Pizza recipe 1*2502.46.11.0637.3– 1.07.8– 0.13.4– 1.0calcium186.51.02.0– 2.1NO Pizza recipe 2*2502.15.31.0167.3– 0.61.61.00.31.0fibres2.51.04.0– 0.6YES Hamburger sandwich2005.410.81.0430.0– 1.010.7– 1.04.6– 1.0agpi1.6– 0.11.0– 3.1NO Chilli con carne3002.78.11.0303.0– 1.07.5– 1.02.9– 1.0fer1.01.02.0– 3.0NO Food productServingAdded sugarsAdded sodiumTotal fatSat + trans fatAdditional nutrientTotal scoreEligibility for claimsgg/100 gg/servingscoremg/100 gscoreg/100 gscoreg/100 gscorechoicesee table1scoreAssetsDefaults

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