Yuka app is coming, but Italy is opposed by supporting its labeling system

The Yuka app with the food labeling system proposed by France is about to arrive in our country, despite the grievances of the government.

The Nutriscore system for labeling foods and evaluating them from a food point of view developed by France has become a smartphone app: Yuka. The arrival of the Yuka app in Italy seems imminent, although the government is not very inclined to accept it because it supports the Italian nutrition label instead.

The application, born in France, has already spread to several European countries and also to the United States and Canada. In Italy, on the other hand, this traffic light labeling system is contrasted with the all-Italian one of the Nutriform Battery nutrition label. What changes between the two labeling systems? Let’s see how they work.

Yuka: the app for product quality

The French Yuka app is based on reading the product barcode . After framing the code with the mobile phone, or even simply by entering the name of the product itself, the application provides information on the basis of the Nutriscore system.

This labeling system was developed by the French National Health Agency and provides information for every 100 grams of product. This application, integrating the nutritional system therefore functions as an app for the quality of food products. But that’s not all, because in addition to indicating the quantity of nutrients in various foods (proteins, sugars, fats, calories, etc.) it can also be used for the evaluation of cosmetics .

Nutriscore and Nutriform: comparison of labeling systems

The Yuka app therefore uses a food assessment based labeling system. Each indication is expressed per 100 grams of product, of which you can read the quantity of the individual nutrients.

For each food, the app returns the symbol of a traffic light with color tones that include: green, yellow, orange and red. The final score of each product is able to vary this traffic light. In this way the app is able to give indications on the healthiest foods and those to avoid .

On the contrary, instead, the Nutriform labeling system, proposed by Italy, is based on the single portion (50 grams) and indicates the quantities of intake on a daily basis.

For each food, therefore, an indication is provided which defines the percentage of energy, fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt, based on the total intake required in a day. This indication is expressed as a percentage and represented in a battery-shaped image.