Yuka application: how does it work?

In a context of growing distrust towards food manufacturers and official labels, food scanning applications are experiencing dazzling success. Yuka and its competitors like Open Food Facts are attracting more and more consumers seeking transparency. According to a recent survey, 77% of participants associate official labels, such as Nutri-Score, with food giants (1). Faced with this distrust, these applications offer an alternative perceived as more independent. By simply scanning a product’s barcode, consumers instantly obtain a health score.

Yuka and its competitors also give a feeling of control to consumers who become actors in their food choices (2). The success of Yuka even goes beyond borders: the French application now has 24 million users in the United States, exceeding the 22 million French users (3).

How does the Yuka app work?

Let’s see how this application works and if we can trust it when shopping at the supermarket.

How to install and activate the Yuka application for Android and iPhone?

The Yuka application is free. Go to your usual platform (App Store or Play Store) to download it to your smartphone.

How to use the free Yuka application? Product scanning

Once the application is installed, simply open it and authorize it to use the smartphone camera. You can then start scanning food product barcodes. For each scanned product, the application displays a score out of 100 accompanied by a qualitative assessment (excellent, good, mediocre, bad).

The Premium version

There is a paid Premium version with more features. In the paid version, you can scan a product offline, search for it using the search bar or receive alerts if a product is not suitable for your diet (for example if you are vegetarian, vegan, if you eat gluten-free, lactose-free, etc.).

A mobile app also for cosmetics

Yuka is also used to scan cosmetic products. The analysis of the dangerousness of the ingredients is presented according to a color code: green (no risk), yellow (limited risk), orange (moderate risk) or red (high risk).

How does Yuka calculate her grades?

An app that takes Nutri-Score into account

As explained on the application website, the score given by Yuka to each scanned product takes into account three parameters:

• nutritional quality (60%), with a calculation based on the Nutri-Score. It is therefore the predominant criterion in the final evaluation;
• the presence of additives (30% of the score) : Yuka penalizes products containing food additives;
• the biological dimension (10% of the score) : products from organic farming benefit from a bonus in the final calculation.

Ultra-processed food penalized

If the score takes into account the Nutri-Score with all its imperfections, it is “improved” thanks to a criterion on the presence of additives. So ultra-processed foods rated well with the Nutri-Score will logically be rated less well by Yuka, if they have additives.

However, nutritional quality (assessed as the Nutri-Score) takes up more than half of the score, which can give somewhat surprising results. For example, Carrefour’s smoked trout has a mediocre score on Yuka (38/100), probably penalized by a Nutri-Score D, even though there are only natural ingredients (trout and salt): the quantity of salt certainly weighed down the result. Likewise, butter is rather poorly rated by Yuka because of the significant presence of fats. These examples show that Yuka can penalize foods that are minimally processed but naturally rich in salt or fat.

Is there an alternative to the Yuka app?

Yes, there is also Open Food Facts! This collaborative application has an advantage: all its data is accessible for free online, unlike Yuka where you have to scan each product yourself (except with the Premium version).

An online database and different criteria

Open Food Facts does not use exactly the same criteria.

• THE Nutri-Score for nutritional quality.
• There NOVA classification which evaluates the degree of food processing (from 1 for raw products to 4 for ultra-processed products).
• A “Green score” which measures the environmental impact of the product.

For example, if we take smoked trout from Carrefour, Open Food Facts indicates:

• Nutri-score D (because of salt);
• Nova 3: it is a processed food;
• Green score F (high environmental impact because farmed trout).

This approach therefore integrates both a health dimension and the environmental aspect.

La Nutrition’s opinion on the Yuka application

Yuka has the merit of raising awareness among the general public about the quality of food and encouraging them to read labels, but the method of calculating the scores raises questions. The heavy weighting given to the Nutri-Score (60% of the score) can lead to penalizing simple and natural foods.

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