One of the first companies to adopt the Nutri-Score, the agri-food giant Danone, announced on Wednesday that it would no longer display it on its drinking yogurts, which are now rated unfavorably, a “lamentable” step backwards according to the designer of the logo.
“We have decided to phase out the Nutri-Score from our dairy and plant-based drinkable products from our brands starting in September 2024,” the manufacturer said in a press statement.
This concerns the liquid versions of the brands Actimel, Danonino, Hi-Pro, Danone and Activia, a spokesperson told AFP.
With a simple color code, ranging from green to red, and letters from A to E, the Nutri-Score guides consumers towards healthier products and encourages manufacturers to improve their recipes.
Pending harmonised and mandatory labelling at European level, companies display it on a voluntary basis in seven countries (Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland). Others, such as in Italy, are fiercely opposed to it.
Danone claims to have been a “pioneer in France”, using the Nutri-Score since its launch in 2017. “It’s a tool that we really believed in”, assures the group’s spokesperson.
But the update of the calculation method, decided in 2023 by the Nutri-Score scientific committee, is contested by Danone and other manufacturers whose products are becoming less well rated.
“It is lamentable, extremely shocking, to see that Danone is abandoning the Nutri-Score when the rules of the game established by scientists no longer please it,” reacted to AFP Serge Hercberg, professor of nutrition at the Sorbonne Paris Nord University and designer of the Nutri-Score.
Not a member of the scientific committee, he defends the work of these experts who “work neither to please industrialists nor to penalize them gratuitously but solely in the interest of public health.”
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The company Ecotone, owner of the manufacturer of plant-based biscuits and drinks Bjorg, was criticized at the end of 2023 by the UFC-Que Choisir association for having removed the Nutri-Score from its packaging just before the deployment of the new algorithm.
Ecotone defended itself, in a reaction sent to AFP, from displaying a “Planet-score” since April 2023 to “raise awareness” among customers about the environmental impact of products. The Nutri-score remains a “compass for developing our new recipes” and remains available online, specifies the company, which affirms that the share of its products rated A, B or C remains “in the same orders of magnitude” with the new calculation method.
– “Snack liquide” –
Danone’s decision only concerns its drinking yogurts. These are now considered drinks rather than foods and therefore notably compared to water, which alone can be classified A. Next come skimmed and semi-skimmed milk (B), then whole milk (C).
With the revision of the algorithm, Actimel, promoted by the group as a health product, goes from A or B to D.
Danonino children’s drinking yogurt also drops to D, “like a sugary soda,” the spokesperson laments, noting that Danonino yogurt consumed by the spoonful “remains at B” with “similar nutritional values.”
Even if the quantity of sugars is equivalent, the distinction between solid and drinkable yoghurt is “relevant” for Professor Hercberg: the latter is mainly taken outside of meals, as a “liquid snack”, at the risk of leading to “significant consumption among children and adolescents”.
“This helps to alert consumers that these products should be consumed responsibly,” says Hercberg.
UFC-Que-Choisir denounces “Danone’s pseudo-nutritional argument” and believes that the episode provides “new proof that displaying the Nutri-Score on a voluntary basis does not ensure that consumers are properly informed”.
The consumer association Foodwatch called the French multinational’s “backtracking” “unacceptable.” “Danone should no longer make us believe that it cares about consumers’ health,” said Audrey Morice, the organization’s campaign manager, in a response sent to AFP.
The abandonment of the Nutri-Score on drinking yogurts “does not change our direction” focused on “health products” and “improving the composition of our products”, assures the Danone spokesperson.
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