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I used to like having cereals for the breakfast, but now, everytime I plan to buy some in the supermarket, I'm cooled down because of how unhealthy they are. I

I used to like having cereals for the breakfast, but now, everytime I plan to buy some in the supermarket, I'm cooled down because of how unhealthy they are. In France, there is something called the "nutriscore". It is a score between A and F that has to be prominently displayed on the packaging of products. It indicates how this product compares with others in the same kind of category on a healthy related scale. Industrial breakfast cereals are very bad. Easily D or E.

baby 3y ago
My friends back in France are all using apps (I think apps like yuka) to check these scores. It’s interesting because I feel like there’s a similar wave in the US (with the recent netflix Poisoned show)
NiloCK 3y ago
Breakfast cereal is generally pure garbage, so I'm happy enough about this score, but a globally applied linear "goodness" scale on foods is too simple to be accurate. Food is good for you, or not, in context of the rest of your diet and, maybe to a lesser extent, your lifestyle/values/goals.
- namdnay 3y ago
  The ratings are per category of food. So if you want sliced bread, you can choose the healthiest one (based on lower sugar level etc) It’s not a global thing that tries to tell you which foods you should be eating
- Broken_Hippo 3y ago
  This isn't telling you what to eat, but it is giving you a tool that you can use to decide if you want to eat it. You know, while you take into consideration your own overall diet and personal taste. It makes make doing this stuff easier, at least to some folks. You don't have to use a tool available to you if you don't like it.
WinstonSmith84 3y ago
On the other hand, bread + jam or croissants, which is typically what French are eating for breakfast, is not necessarily better. As bought from Bakeries, those don't have a nutri-score either.
OmarShehata 3y ago
This is really interesting because I can see intense pushback against suggesting the government do this in the US (unless "nutriscore" is a private 3rd party score, not the gov?) I think no one would _really_ object to labelling like oatmeal healthier than chips. The issue would be along the thresholds, when a product gets a B and its competitor gets an A. I can see wanting to dispute that decision, or claims of corruption to skew the ratings in favor of certain companies etc.
- suckitsam 3y ago
  See also: "sugar free" = 0.49g/serving
  - Spivak 3y ago
    This isn't as exploitable as it first seems. > The food contains less than 0.5 g of sugars, as defined in § 101.9(c)(6)(ii), per reference amount customarily consumed and per labeled serving or, in the case of a meal product or main dish product, less than 0.5 g of sugars per labeled serving; and >(ii) The food contains no ingredient that is a sugar or that is generally understood by consumers to contain sugars unless the listing of the ingredient in the ingredient statement is followed by an asterisk that refers to the statement below the list of ingredients, which states "adds a trivial amount of sugar," "adds a negligible amount of sugar," or "adds a dietarily insignificant amount of sugar;" and https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=101.60 https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfr... First, you can't add sugar, it has to be sugars that naturally occur in the other ingredients, but not ingredients that people know contain sugar like fruit, and second products don't have as much leeway as you think in defining their serving size. The FDA actually spells out what kinds of food get what serving size which is why you never see 1 chip / serving.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Not everyone understands how sugary apple juice is. Look at how often it shows up in “health” food. The goal isn’t to fool everyone all the time, it’s to fool people who are only looking at the label or are skimming the ingredients list etc.
Loic 3y ago
This is because in France, in the past 20 years, we completely lost the simple "Müsli". In Germany, we still have them and this is in our family our base breakfast from Monday to Friday. But effectively, in France, I cannot find Müsli without added sugar.
- ilyt 3y ago
  Even that... isn't great. Certainly step up from "just a bunch of carbohydrates" but not exactly super healthy either.
  - Etheryte 3y ago
    There is nothing wrong with carbohydrates, it's over consuming them that's the problem. Müsli without added sugar can easily be a part of a well balanced diet. It's basically just a different form of oatmeal.
    - donatj 3y ago
      Carbohydrates are just sugar your body has to work a little bit to unlock first, but they’re just sugar. They’re really not much better for you than raw sugar, they’re just slow dose. They’ll spike your insulin a little less, but ask a diabetic, the overall difference isn’t a ton. Fiber is a carbohydrate the body can’t digest so you can generally subtract them when figuring, but beyond that carbohydrates alone are just sugar as far as your body is concerned.
      - brianwawok 3y ago
        Ok. You eat a sugar cereal every morning, and I’ll keep eating my old fashioned old meal with no sugar. Let’s compete weight and A1C in 10 years.
      - infinite8s 3y ago
        As is everything in biochemistry, the absorption rate sets the response. 5g of sugar that can only be digested over the course of hours is much different than 5g of sugar that can be digested in minutes.
_kidlike 3y ago
unfortunately this score gets "gamed" by the manufacturers, e.g. by including vitamins. So a lot of them get scores of A-B, and are still shit... :(
- laurentlb 3y ago
  If it encourages the industry to reduce the amount of salt and sugar they add, I consider it as a good thing. The Nutriscore is a partial indicator, e.g. it doesn't mention how processed something is. But I find it a valuable tool to quickly discard many options from the supermarket.
laurent123456 3y ago
There's so many cereal options. It's easy to find some that are healthy, such as low sugar bran or wheat cereals.
Renaud 3y ago
You can find cereals with a Nutriscore of A. There aren't many, they are usually the ones without added sugar or chocolate, and they tend to cost more unfortunately. Recently got some Carrefour bio (organic) cereals, some mixed with various seeds and another one mix of cereals, both with A Nutriscore and no processing or added sugar. As with all cereals, the energy value is always around 350-400kCal/100g, but they contain very low actual sugar (15% for one, still quite high probably because of the dried fruits -I'll need to chose better next time- and 1% for the other). Typical breakfast cereals will be between 25% to 50%+ sugar content (wtf...).
morsch 3y ago
There are loads of total garbage sugary breakfast cereals available that are B. I mean literally stuff with 24% sugar. The label is completely worthless, ignore it, just read the ingredients list and the dietary information. https://www.lebensmittelklarheit.de/fragen-antworten/nutri-score-auf-suessem-muesli https://www.lebensmittelklarheit.de/fragen-antworten/nutri-s...
- Angostura 3y ago
  If you read the question and answer, “completely useless “ is just silly. There are some cases where it fails. The people behind the score acknowledges that it’s not good for sugary cereals and say they will work to amend it
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- matthewaveryusa 3y ago
  All the more reason to avoid anything below B then no? Or do you have a counter example of something rated below a B that you would recommend over the B rating?
- Obscurity4340 3y ago
  What do you think of those Kelloggs All-Bran Buds (think they're psyllium)? I do kinda wish they didn't add any sugar but with all the fibre and micronutrients, I feel like its pretty wholesome still...
  - hedora 3y ago
    I tried those recently. They are a bit too sweet for my taste (though are somehow low sugar). My main issue with them is that Kelloggs uses glyphosate (round up) as a drying agent at harvest time. If I could find an organic version, I might buy them again.
    - Obscurity4340 3y ago
Clubber 3y ago
I wish we had something like this in the US, but the food manufacturers would never allow it. Our regulatory agencies are completely compromised.
- laurentlb 3y ago
  In Europe, it's not (yet) mandatory, but lots of manufacturers have decided to opt in.
  - Clubber 3y ago
    The manufacturers in the US don't do it voluntarily because there would be 5 rows of F's down almost every isle.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
thomas8787 3y ago
Funny thing is frozen French fries get nutriscore A because as long it's not prepared, it are just potatoes.
arzig 3y ago
As someone from the us, I’m deeply skeptical of government nutritional labeling / recommendation since the travesty of the food pyramid when I was young. Cereals were basically the best thing to eat because how else where you going to fill the foundation of the pyramid with your 11 (exact number is fuzzy) recommended servings of grains per day. The pyramid was shown proudly on all the boxes. Meanwhile protein and fats were to be minimized. It may not be causal, but it certainly didn’t help the obesity problem in this country that the government explicitly recommended everyone fill up in foods that aren’t actually filling.
- donatj 3y ago
  Did you actually base what you ate on the food pyramid? I have heard this levied against the government before as having caused the obesity epidemic, but I really can’t imagine someone who sitting around deciding “I have to eat more bread, the government’s pyramid drawing demands it” rather than just eating what they want to eat. I grew up in the same period, they showed us the pyramid in school and I literally never gave it a second thought.
  - wincy 3y ago
    We did because the schools followed the food pyramid. So they pushed foods on us that were low fat and high carb (like the ‘healthy’ chocolate skim milk, and no whole milk). Margarine instead of butter. Government food recommendations are HUGE deal to kids in public schools in the United States.
    - donatj 3y ago
      Ah, that is a good point. I was a poor sack lunch kid so I never considered that aspect. Have they improved at all? Minnesota passed free school lunch for all, and my daughter will be starting school in a few years. Packing her a healthy lunch literally becomes the more expensive option.
      - acdha 3y ago
jmrm 3y ago
Are oatmeal difficult to find without sugar in the US? I find it the best to have at breakfast due how less hungry I get over the day with that.
- caturopath 3y ago
  Not at all. (The poster sounds like they are in France, though.)
vixen99 3y ago
Takes a few minutes to heat raw oats with milk to make porridge. Add some fruit and you've ticked a lot of the boxes for a proportion of a day's required nutrients as indicated by USDA and similar authorities elsewhere. I've hardly touched a commercial cereal for years and have no regrets. Raw Oats? https://reedir.arsnet.usda.gov/codesearchwebapp/(S(z2xdbujdrb2mqsfr4eqjcbqk))/measures.aspx?id=57602100 https://reedir.arsnet.usda.gov/codesearchwebapp/(S(z2xdbujdr...
kmill 3y ago
Ah, you mean "délicieux" or "excellent" ;-)
bleuchase 3y ago
Ground beef got a C which tells me everything I need to know about the utility of the system.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  Exactly. You can't have a nutrition rating system for humans and not rate the skeletal muscle of cattle above pretty much everything else. Doesn't matter what one thinks about the meat industry, carbon production, and so forth; from a nutrition standpoint, beef has all the nutrition a human needs, humans are well adapted to consuming it, and hypotheses around cancer and heart disease never panned out. And wow, what a bunch of poppycock that nutriscore that system is. I'd heard of it but never looked into it. It considers "high" saturated fat, or "high" salt, or "high" energy density as negatives.
  - jhaenchen 3y ago
    Fat content too intense for my taste. You claim the debate on saturated fat is settled but that's not what pretty much every major health organization says. Big keto fan huh?
- anothermoron 3y ago
  [dead]
- ac29 3y ago
  Too high or too low? If the scale is A-F, that would put ground beef at about average which seems about right. Its a great source of protein and a good source of some vitamins and minerals, but is high in saturated fat and has a low amount of other vitamins and minerals.
aszantu 3y ago
Recently found organic beef has a nutri-score of B, but the same meat, pressed as a patty with salt and pepper gets a nutri-score of D, I wouldn't give too much about the score now xD
- PopAlongKid 3y ago
  Wouldn't the patty also be ground up with all the fat, while the raw unprocessed beef could have visible fat trimmed and not consumed? Maybe that accounts for the difference.
- rajup 3y ago
  That’s probably due to the extra sodium from the salt and preservatives they add.
- laurentlb 3y ago
  Adding (too much) salt is going to reduce the rating, this is intentional.
andrepd 3y ago
Nutriscore is notoriously flawed. You are better off looking at the actual nutrition information and minimising the amount of saturated fat and sugar you eat.
- greatgib 3y ago
  I don't think. Probably some times they are a little bit dramatic. But you are still free to make your own opinion. At least for one category of products, they use the same elements for comparison.
himinlomax 3y ago
Nutriscore is terrible. They keep on diabolising saturated fat despite tye lack of evidence, and they give a pass to sugar and omega-6 despite the mounting evidence that they are the cause of the obesity crisis. For instance, they label Roquefort with an F because it's fatty and salty, but nobody's gotten fat eating that, you can't just go binging pounds of it, it's just not that kind of food.
ephbit 3y ago
Hm, Wikipedia defines it so: > Breakfast cereal is a breakfast food made from processed cereal grains. If your cereal mix contains only the grains/seeds and not loads of sugar it's almost impossible for it to be nutrionally bad. Consumer's choice which cereal mix they buy.

baby 3y ago

My friends back in France are all using apps (I think apps like yuka) to check these scores. It’s interesting because I feel like there’s a similar wave in the US (with the recent netflix Poisoned show)

NiloCK 3y ago

Breakfast cereal is generally pure garbage, so I'm happy enough about this score, but a globally applied linear "goodness" scale on foods is too simple to be accurate. Food is good for you, or not, in context of the rest of your diet and, maybe to a lesser extent, your lifestyle/values/goals.

namdnay 3y ago
The ratings are per category of food. So if you want sliced bread, you can choose the healthiest one (based on lower sugar level etc) It’s not a global thing that tries to tell you which foods you should be eating
Broken_Hippo 3y ago
This isn't telling you what to eat, but it is giving you a tool that you can use to decide if you want to eat it. You know, while you take into consideration your own overall diet and personal taste. It makes make doing this stuff easier, at least to some folks. You don't have to use a tool available to you if you don't like it.

WinstonSmith84 3y ago

On the other hand, bread + jam or croissants, which is typically what French are eating for breakfast, is not necessarily better. As bought from Bakeries, those don't have a nutri-score either.

OmarShehata 3y ago

This is really interesting because I can see intense pushback against suggesting the government do this in the US (unless "nutriscore" is a private 3rd party score, not the gov?) I think no one would _really_ object to labelling like oatmeal healthier than chips. The issue would be along the thresholds, when a product gets a B and its competitor gets an A. I can see wanting to dispute that decision, or claims of corruption to skew the ratings in favor of certain companies etc.

suckitsam 3y ago
See also: "sugar free" = 0.49g/serving
- Spivak 3y ago
  This isn't as exploitable as it first seems. > The food contains less than 0.5 g of sugars, as defined in § 101.9(c)(6)(ii), per reference amount customarily consumed and per labeled serving or, in the case of a meal product or main dish product, less than 0.5 g of sugars per labeled serving; and >(ii) The food contains no ingredient that is a sugar or that is generally understood by consumers to contain sugars unless the listing of the ingredient in the ingredient statement is followed by an asterisk that refers to the statement below the list of ingredients, which states "adds a trivial amount of sugar," "adds a negligible amount of sugar," or "adds a dietarily insignificant amount of sugar;" and https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=101.60 https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfr... First, you can't add sugar, it has to be sugars that naturally occur in the other ingredients, but not ingredients that people know contain sugar like fruit, and second products don't have as much leeway as you think in defining their serving size. The FDA actually spells out what kinds of food get what serving size which is why you never see 1 chip / serving.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Not everyone understands how sugary apple juice is. Look at how often it shows up in “health” food. The goal isn’t to fool everyone all the time, it’s to fool people who are only looking at the label or are skimming the ingredients list etc.

Loic 3y ago

This is because in France, in the past 20 years, we completely lost the simple "Müsli". In Germany, we still have them and this is in our family our base breakfast from Monday to Friday. But effectively, in France, I cannot find Müsli without added sugar.

ilyt 3y ago
Even that... isn't great. Certainly step up from "just a bunch of carbohydrates" but not exactly super healthy either.
- Etheryte 3y ago
  There is nothing wrong with carbohydrates, it's over consuming them that's the problem. Müsli without added sugar can easily be a part of a well balanced diet. It's basically just a different form of oatmeal.
  - donatj 3y ago
    Carbohydrates are just sugar your body has to work a little bit to unlock first, but they’re just sugar. They’re really not much better for you than raw sugar, they’re just slow dose. They’ll spike your insulin a little less, but ask a diabetic, the overall difference isn’t a ton. Fiber is a carbohydrate the body can’t digest so you can generally subtract them when figuring, but beyond that carbohydrates alone are just sugar as far as your body is concerned.
    - brianwawok 3y ago
      Ok. You eat a sugar cereal every morning, and I’ll keep eating my old fashioned old meal with no sugar. Let’s compete weight and A1C in 10 years.
    - infinite8s 3y ago
      As is everything in biochemistry, the absorption rate sets the response. 5g of sugar that can only be digested over the course of hours is much different than 5g of sugar that can be digested in minutes.

_kidlike 3y ago

unfortunately this score gets "gamed" by the manufacturers, e.g. by including vitamins. So a lot of them get scores of A-B, and are still shit... :(

laurentlb 3y ago
If it encourages the industry to reduce the amount of salt and sugar they add, I consider it as a good thing. The Nutriscore is a partial indicator, e.g. it doesn't mention how processed something is. But I find it a valuable tool to quickly discard many options from the supermarket.

laurent123456 3y ago

There's so many cereal options. It's easy to find some that are healthy, such as low sugar bran or wheat cereals.

Renaud 3y ago

You can find cereals with a Nutriscore of A. There aren't many, they are usually the ones without added sugar or chocolate, and they tend to cost more unfortunately. Recently got some Carrefour bio (organic) cereals, some mixed with various seeds and another one mix of cereals, both with A Nutriscore and no processing or added sugar. As with all cereals, the energy value is always around 350-400kCal/100g, but they contain very low actual sugar (15% for one, still quite high probably because of the dried fruits -I'll need to chose better next time- and 1% for the other). Typical breakfast cereals will be between 25% to 50%+ sugar content (wtf...).

morsch 3y ago

There are loads of total garbage sugary breakfast cereals available that are B. I mean literally stuff with 24% sugar. The label is completely worthless, ignore it, just read the ingredients list and the dietary information. https://www.lebensmittelklarheit.de/fragen-antworten/nutri-score-auf-suessem-muesli https://www.lebensmittelklarheit.de/fragen-antworten/nutri-s...

Angostura 3y ago
If you read the question and answer, “completely useless “ is just silly. There are some cases where it fails. The people behind the score acknowledges that it’s not good for sugary cereals and say they will work to amend it
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
matthewaveryusa 3y ago
All the more reason to avoid anything below B then no? Or do you have a counter example of something rated below a B that you would recommend over the B rating?
Obscurity4340 3y ago
What do you think of those Kelloggs All-Bran Buds (think they're psyllium)? I do kinda wish they didn't add any sugar but with all the fibre and micronutrients, I feel like its pretty wholesome still...
- hedora 3y ago
  I tried those recently. They are a bit too sweet for my taste (though are somehow low sugar). My main issue with them is that Kelloggs uses glyphosate (round up) as a drying agent at harvest time. If I could find an organic version, I might buy them again.
  - Obscurity4340 3y ago

Clubber 3y ago

I wish we had something like this in the US, but the food manufacturers would never allow it. Our regulatory agencies are completely compromised.

laurentlb 3y ago
In Europe, it's not (yet) mandatory, but lots of manufacturers have decided to opt in.
- Clubber 3y ago
  The manufacturers in the US don't do it voluntarily because there would be 5 rows of F's down almost every isle.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

thomas8787 3y ago

Funny thing is frozen French fries get nutriscore A because as long it's not prepared, it are just potatoes.

arzig 3y ago

As someone from the us, I’m deeply skeptical of government nutritional labeling / recommendation since the travesty of the food pyramid when I was young. Cereals were basically the best thing to eat because how else where you going to fill the foundation of the pyramid with your 11 (exact number is fuzzy) recommended servings of grains per day. The pyramid was shown proudly on all the boxes. Meanwhile protein and fats were to be minimized. It may not be causal, but it certainly didn’t help the obesity problem in this country that the government explicitly recommended everyone fill up in foods that aren’t actually filling.

donatj 3y ago
Did you actually base what you ate on the food pyramid? I have heard this levied against the government before as having caused the obesity epidemic, but I really can’t imagine someone who sitting around deciding “I have to eat more bread, the government’s pyramid drawing demands it” rather than just eating what they want to eat. I grew up in the same period, they showed us the pyramid in school and I literally never gave it a second thought.
- wincy 3y ago
  We did because the schools followed the food pyramid. So they pushed foods on us that were low fat and high carb (like the ‘healthy’ chocolate skim milk, and no whole milk). Margarine instead of butter. Government food recommendations are HUGE deal to kids in public schools in the United States.
  - donatj 3y ago
    Ah, that is a good point. I was a poor sack lunch kid so I never considered that aspect. Have they improved at all? Minnesota passed free school lunch for all, and my daughter will be starting school in a few years. Packing her a healthy lunch literally becomes the more expensive option.
    - acdha 3y ago

jmrm 3y ago

Are oatmeal difficult to find without sugar in the US? I find it the best to have at breakfast due how less hungry I get over the day with that.

caturopath 3y ago
Not at all. (The poster sounds like they are in France, though.)

vixen99 3y ago

Takes a few minutes to heat raw oats with milk to make porridge. Add some fruit and you've ticked a lot of the boxes for a proportion of a day's required nutrients as indicated by USDA and similar authorities elsewhere. I've hardly touched a commercial cereal for years and have no regrets. Raw Oats? https://reedir.arsnet.usda.gov/codesearchwebapp/(S(z2xdbujdrb2mqsfr4eqjcbqk))/measures.aspx?id=57602100 https://reedir.arsnet.usda.gov/codesearchwebapp/(S(z2xdbujdr...

kmill 3y ago

Ah, you mean "délicieux" or "excellent" ;-)

bleuchase 3y ago

Ground beef got a C which tells me everything I need to know about the utility of the system.

ravenstine 3y ago
Exactly. You can't have a nutrition rating system for humans and not rate the skeletal muscle of cattle above pretty much everything else. Doesn't matter what one thinks about the meat industry, carbon production, and so forth; from a nutrition standpoint, beef has all the nutrition a human needs, humans are well adapted to consuming it, and hypotheses around cancer and heart disease never panned out. And wow, what a bunch of poppycock that nutriscore that system is. I'd heard of it but never looked into it. It considers "high" saturated fat, or "high" salt, or "high" energy density as negatives.
- jhaenchen 3y ago
  Fat content too intense for my taste. You claim the debate on saturated fat is settled but that's not what pretty much every major health organization says. Big keto fan huh?
anothermoron 3y ago
[dead]
ac29 3y ago
Too high or too low? If the scale is A-F, that would put ground beef at about average which seems about right. Its a great source of protein and a good source of some vitamins and minerals, but is high in saturated fat and has a low amount of other vitamins and minerals.

aszantu 3y ago

Recently found organic beef has a nutri-score of B, but the same meat, pressed as a patty with salt and pepper gets a nutri-score of D, I wouldn't give too much about the score now xD

PopAlongKid 3y ago
Wouldn't the patty also be ground up with all the fat, while the raw unprocessed beef could have visible fat trimmed and not consumed? Maybe that accounts for the difference.
rajup 3y ago
That’s probably due to the extra sodium from the salt and preservatives they add.
laurentlb 3y ago
Adding (too much) salt is going to reduce the rating, this is intentional.

andrepd 3y ago

Nutriscore is notoriously flawed. You are better off looking at the actual nutrition information and minimising the amount of saturated fat and sugar you eat.

greatgib 3y ago
I don't think. Probably some times they are a little bit dramatic. But you are still free to make your own opinion. At least for one category of products, they use the same elements for comparison.

himinlomax 3y ago

Nutriscore is terrible. They keep on diabolising saturated fat despite tye lack of evidence, and they give a pass to sugar and omega-6 despite the mounting evidence that they are the cause of the obesity crisis. For instance, they label Roquefort with an F because it's fatty and salty, but nobody's gotten fat eating that, you can't just go binging pounds of it, it's just not that kind of food.

ephbit 3y ago

Hm, Wikipedia defines it so: > Breakfast cereal is a breakfast food made from processed cereal grains. If your cereal mix contains only the grains/seeds and not loads of sugar it's almost impossible for it to be nutrionally bad. Consumer's choice which cereal mix they buy.