Labelling in the EU is meant to give consumers accurate and honest information on the contents of their food so they can make informed decisions about what they are buying. But due to gaps in EU rules consumers can easily get "lost in a maze" of puzzling claims, according to the European Court of Auditors (ECA).
"Instead of bringing clarity, food labels too often create confusion; there are hundreds of different schemes, logos and claims that people need to decipher," said Keit Pentus-Rosimannus, an ECA auditor. "Companies can be very creative in what they put on packaging, and EU rules have not caught up with a constantly evolving market, leaving some 450 million European consumers vulnerable to intentionally or unintentionally misleading messages."
EU rules require producers to list ingredients, allergens and other mandatory information on food packages. Firms can then add voluntary statements including nutrition and health claims -- such as "source of Omega-3 fatty acids" or "calcium is necessary to maintain healthy teeth".
Here the picture gets muddier, according to the 27-nation bloc's spending watchdog, as current rules allow businesses to zoom in on the more flattering features of their products and gloss over other aspects. An energy bar with lots of sugar can for example be branded simply as "high in protein" and a fatty orange cookie as a "source of fibre", according to the report.
Even when such claims are false, checks and penalties are weak and almost non-existent for online food sales, it said. Health claims related to plant-substances or "botanicals" are not yet regulated at EU level, which leaves consumers potentially exposed to assertions not supported by science, the auditors added. Similarly, there is no EU definition of what "vegan" and "vegetarian" mean, although private certification schemes exist. Finally, different "front-of-pack nutrition labelling" schemes such as Nutri-Score and Keyhole, which aim at helping shoppers identify healthier food options, are in use in different countries, adding to the confusion, the ECA said.
European consumer rights group Foodwatch is pushing for Nutri-Score, currently used in France, Germany and a handful other countries, to be adopted across the bloc.
The ECA urged the European Commission to take a number of steps including addressing the gaps in the EU legal framework, and strengthening member states' checks on voluntary labels and online retail.
Nutri-Score is kinda useless. The score isn't based on overall healthiness, it's based on how healthy something is within its group. The group isn't listed anywhere and its unclear what's in there. You could find a frozen pizza with a higher rating than hummus or soft drinks being rated the same as bottled water. I don't even notice the score anymore, I go straight to the ingredients and nutrition table.
EDIT: I did look into it again. Almost all scores are based on the same formula, however, the way it is calculated, it still does not make sense to compare scores across different products. Which is probably why I thought they are separated. Some of the actual problems with the Nutri-Score are as follows:
All the information is taken from the German Wikipedia.
I think your post could be misleading. Iirc there are three categories, drinks, food and milk-stuff. So you can absolutely compare frozen pizza with hummus, and maybe the frozen pizza has more protein and the hummus more fat.
The algorithm is on Wikipedia
Ps: I might also be wrong, but this is how I remember :)