What is Nutri-Score and how to read it

Nutri-Score is a labelling system that sums up a food's nutritional profile with a single letter and colour from A to E. It is calculated per 100 grams, counting sugar, salt, saturated fat and calories as negative, and fibre, protein and plant content as positive. It is a nutrition-quality grade, not a safety grade.

The numbers in a nutrition table mean little to most people. Is '22 grams of sugar per 100 grams' good or bad? If the product next to it has 14, which one should you pick? Nutri-Score was designed to reduce exactly that comparison to a second. But read without knowing what it measures and what it does not, it is easy to draw the wrong conclusion.

What is Nutri-Score and where did it come from?

Nutri-Score is a front-of-pack labelling system developed in France and now also used in countries such as Belgium, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland. It grades a product in five steps from A to E: dark-green A is the best and red E the weakest nutritional profile.

One important detail: the system is voluntary rather than mandatory across the European Union. A manufacturer puts it on the pack if it chooses to. So not seeing a Nutri-Score on a product does not mean the product is poor; it only means the maker does not use the label. It is not mandatory in Türkiye either, though you may come across it on imported goods and on some brands' packaging.

The logic behind the system rests on a nutrient profiling model developed in the United Kingdom: the negative elements per 100 grams are added up as points, the positive elements are subtracted from that total, and the remaining net score is converted into a letter.

What do the letters mean?

The letters are not an absolute 'healthy or unhealthy' verdict but a relative position within the same category. The table below sums up what each letter means in practice.

The examples are for typical products; within the same category the letter changes as the brand and the recipe change. One brand's wholemeal bread may get a B while a saltier one gets a C. That is precisely the system's real job: telling apart two products sitting on the same shelf.

How is the score calculated?

The calculation works from two sides. The negative side looks at the energy (calories), sugar, saturated fat and salt per 100 grams of the product; for each of these four, points rise as the amount rises. So the higher the negative score, the further the product slides towards E.

The positive side looks at fibre, protein and the share of fruit, vegetables, legumes and nuts. These are subtracted from the total. That is why a high-fibre wholegrain product can earn a better letter than a refined product containing the same amount of sugar.

Once both sides are combined, the remaining net score becomes a letter. The practical consequence of this design is that a product does not automatically become an E because of one bad property, but it drops quickly if several negative elements are high at once. Equally, high fibre or protein can offset a certain amount of sugar.

Why are drinks measured on a separate scale?

Beverages are scored on a different scale from solid foods, and this is one of the system's most important details. The reason is simple: the sugar in 100 millilitres of a drink is not the same thing as the sugar in the same amount of a solid food. People consume drinks far more quickly and in far greater volume.

On that separate scale, plain water is the only drink that can reach an A. Sugary fizzy drinks and fruit juices fall easily to D or E, while sweetened 'sugar-free' versions usually stay in the middle. Had drinks been measured on the solid-food scale, a sugary soda could have looked misleadingly good on paper.

Fruit juice causes particular confusion. A hundred percent fruit juice may have no added sugar, but the fruit's own sugar arrives in liquid form and without the fibre; the system counts that as sugar. That is why even a juice with no added sugar can earn a lower letter than expected.

The calculation was updated in 2023

Nutri-Score's method is not fixed; it is updated on the recommendation of its scientific committee. The most comprehensive revision came into force in 2023 and noticeably changed the letters in some categories.

The main effects of the update were these: wholegrain products became better differentiated, products high in salt and sugar were scored more strictly, processed meats moved down, the distinction between fats became clearer, and unsaturated-fat oils such as olive oil moved to a better letter. On the drinks side, the advantage held by sweetened products was reduced.

The practical consequence: a letter you saw in an older source may no longer hold. It is best to confirm the letter you see on a product from the packaging itself or from an up-to-date database.

Nutri-Score and NOVA are not the same thing

The two systems are often confused, but they answer different questions. Nutri-Score asks 'how much sugar, salt, fat and fibre does this product contain'; the NOVA classification asks 'how processed is this product'. A product can sit in very different places on those two measures.

A ready-made cereal with sweeteners and added fibre, for instance, can earn a good Nutri-Score letter while falling into the ultra-processed class under NOVA. Conversely, plain butter counts as minimally processed under NOVA but earns a low letter under Nutri-Score because of its saturated fat. That is why reading the two together gives a more realistic picture than deciding on a single indicator.

A worked example: two breakfast cereals

Say you have two boxes in your hands and both say 'wholegrain'. The sequence runs like this:

• Start with the letters: if one is a C and the other a D, the first filter has already done its job.
• If the letters match, move to the sugar per 100 grams: the difference between 12 and 24 grams is roughly two teaspoons of sugar per bowl.
• Look at the fibre figure: more fibre means both longer satiety and a better letter.
• Check the first item on the ingredient list: does it say 'wholemeal wheat flour' or 'wheat flour'?
• Check the salt too; in sweet products the salt per 100 grams can be higher than you expect.

These five steps take under a minute and fill in what the letter alone cannot say. We applied the same method by category in our best breakfast cereals list.

What does Nutri-Score not measure?

Knowing the system's limits is half of reading the letter correctly. It does not measure the following:

• Portion size: the calculation is per 100 grams. A food eaten in small amounts but energy-dense (a spice mix, a sauce, nuts) can look worse on paper than it is.
• Degree of processing: it does not directly measure whether a product is ultra-processed. Separate classifications such as NOVA exist for that.
• Additives: how many E-numbers a product contains does not enter the letter. To see the additives you need the ingredient list; you can learn what they are on our E-number basics page.
• Ingredient quality: it does not distinguish whether the same amount of protein comes from meat or from a soy isolate.
• Individual needs: for someone with an allergy, diabetes or a specific diet, the right choice is not decided by a letter.
• Safety: a product with an A is not 'safe' and a product with an E is not 'dangerous'. The letter describes the nutritional profile only.

The olive oil case: when does a letter look misleading?

Energy-dense foods that dietary guidelines actually recommend can, at first glance, earn a lower letter than expected. Olive oil is the classic example: because its calorie and fat content are high, it sat in the middle band under the older calculation. The 2023 update sharpened the distinction between fats and moved olive oil to a better position.

The real lesson here is not to draw cross-category conclusions from a single product. Comparing olive oil with a biscuit is meaningless; comparing olive oil with other oils, and a biscuit with other biscuits, is meaningful. The same reading applies to nutritious but energy-dense foods such as nuts, oily fish and olives.

Common mistakes

• Comparing different categories: judging a cereal against a cheese by letter gives the wrong answer.
• Treating the letter as a safety grade: an E says the nutritional profile is weak, not that the product is harmful.
• Forgetting the portion: a per-100-gram calculation gives an unrealistic picture for something eaten a teaspoon at a time.
• Reading an A as a free pass: eating a great deal of an A-rated product still upsets the balance.
• Assuming a product without the label is poor: the system is voluntary, and many good products carry no label at all.

Who does it help, and how?

Nutri-Score helps most when you want a quick choice within one category: caught between two breakfast cereals, two instant soups or two yogurts, it points you in a direction within seconds. For someone watching their salt or sugar it is also a practical first filter.

By contrast, for someone who must avoid a specific substance (an allergy, phenylketonuria, a particular diet), the letter alone is not enough; that person needs to read the ingredient list directly. We explained how to do that on our ingredient list basics page.

Practical use at the shelf

• Use the letter only to compare similar products on the same shelf.
• If two products share a letter, separate them by the sugar and salt per 100 grams.
• Read the letter with a different eye on drinks: there, in practice, only plain water reaches an A.
• Even when the letter looks good, check the ingredient list on something you eat often.
• With no label, go back to the nutrition table: above 22.5 grams of sugar per 100 grams is high and below 5 grams is low; for salt those thresholds are 1.5 and 0.3 grams.

No letter on the pack: reading with thresholds

Because the system is voluntary, most products on shelves in Türkiye carry no letter. In that case the place to go back to is the nutrition table. The front of pack colour coding system used in the United Kingdom applies the thresholds below per 100 g, and they work as a practical compass when there is no letter.

Any value between the two thresholds sits in the middle band. For drinks the same system uses lower thresholds, because 100 ml of a drink is consumed far more quickly than 100 g of a solid food. That is exactly the logic behind Nutri-Score scoring drinks on a separate scale. We went into why fruit juice is scored more strictly than people expect in is fruit juice as healthy as fruit.

Thirty seconds at the shelf while shopping

• Fix the category first: are the two products in your hands from the same shelf? If not, comparing their letters means nothing.
• Read the letter if there is one; if there is not, go straight to the sugar figure per 100 g.
• Check the salt; even in sweet products the salt per 100 g can be higher than expected.
• Look for the fibre value: of two products with the same letter, the one higher in fibre usually keeps you full longer.
• Look at the first item on the ingredient list; if sugar or syrup comes first, that is information independent of the letter.
• If you eat the whole pack in one go, work with the pack total rather than the portion column.

Situations that come up often

How this plays out on shelves in Türkiye

Nutri-Score is not mandatory in Türkiye; you will mostly see the letter on imported goods and on brands that also sell into the European market. In practice that means using two methods together: read the letter when there is one, and fall back on the threshold table above when there is not. To close that gap we added a score calculated from nutrition values to a large share of the foods in our own database, and we assessed drinks on a separate scale. You can search products on the Nutri-Score lookup page, or scan a barcode and see the same information on the product itself. We set out the rules behind the calculation openly on our method page.

Who this matters most for

• People facing too many options in a shop: the letter separates two products on the same shelf within seconds.
• Households with children: in cereals, flavoured milk and snack categories the letter makes sugar differences visible quickly.
• People watching their salt intake: the letter is not enough on its own, but it filters out high salt products early.
• People with allergies: the letter is not sufficient here, and the decision comes straight from the ingredient list and the highlighted allergens.
• People following a nutrition goal set by a doctor or dietitian: the letter does not replace that goal, it is only a first pass filter.

Is there an equivalent for cosmetics?

A question that comes up often: is there a single letter system like Nutri-Score for cosmetics? There is no direct equivalent, because the two sides ask different questions. In food the question is how much sugar, salt, fat and fibre a product contains; in cosmetics it is whether the formula holds a debated or irritating ingredient and whether it suits the skin of the person using it. That difference changes the method too: a cosmetic assessment does not take an average, and the band of the riskiest ingredient in the formula sets the result, because a single ingredient at a small percentage can still trigger a reaction. We gathered how to read a cosmetic label in ingredients to watch on a cosmetic label.

The bottom line

Nutri-Score is a practical compass that translates the nutrition label into a language anyone can read. Used correctly it saves minutes in a shop; used incorrectly it leads to loading a single letter with more meaning than it carries. The healthiest approach is to treat it as a starting point and to make the decision together with the ingredient list.

If you want to see a product's letter, its additives and its nutrition values together, you can scan its barcode; you can also run a Nutri-Score product search and list better-scoring alternatives in the same category.