I'm consulting with a colleague who is planning a research project, for which he needs a useful single-number measure of the "healthfulness" of packaged food products that one could buy off the shelf in a US grocery store. He's done similar work before, using the Nutri-Score:
https://www.santepubliquefrance.fr/en/nutri-score
The Nutri-Score is a 5-level ordinal variable, but it is simply a categorization of an underlying numerical "nutrition score," that can range from -15 (most healthy) to 40 (least healthy). I advised him to use the underlying numerical score for the modeling I have in mind.
Apparently the Nutri-Score and its underlying "nutritional score" is more widely used in Europe. One component of it (the percentage of the weight of the food that is fruits, veggies, nuts, pulses, and "good" oils) could present a problem for us. I've found some images of European food labels online; apparently that percentage is often printed right in with the ingredient list in Europe. Like "dried apples (20%)" But in the US it is not.
Does anyone know of a readily-calculated or -programmed, single-value summated rating scale of the "healthfulness" of a food product, that requires for input only the data customarily found on US food labels?
Thanks.
--Chris Ryan
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Christopher Ryan
Clinical Associate Professor of Family Medicine
SUNY Upstate Clinical Campus
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