Are Food Analysis Apps Reliable?

Due to the extensive offer of mobile applications for, it is essential that, before choosing one and trusting the information it offers us, we do an analysis of the information it offers us. In many cases, these applications lack scientific support and the criteria they use to classify food can confuse the user. For this reason, we are going to investigate the criteria used by these Apps to catalog the foods that we include in our daily purchases.

What are the classification criteria?

Although not all follow the same classification criteria, for the most part, they use one of these 2 systems that are applied in the OpenFoodFacts database:

• : classification of foods according to their amount of calories, fat, sugar and salt per 100 grams of product.
• Nova system: classification of products according to their level of processing

These applications take into account a series of variables to classify foods depending on the components of its labeling, such as: degree of processing, fats, sugars or salt. This score is also influenced by factors such as whether the product is ecological or the presence of, either harmless or "controversial" according to EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) criteria.

However, the disparity of criteria they use can cause confusion among consumers since a same food can be classified as healthy or not depending on the application. This disparity is due to the fact that the databases from which the information is obtained are not always the same. In addition, depending on the application, these variables may have a different weight when giving the score to the product.

Given all these variables, each application works with a independent algorithm that provides a result or score that can:

• Penalize ultra-processed foods which would be those with harmful additives or with a bad score in it.
• Consider healthy those foods with less degree of processing and quantity of fats, sugars and additives.

In this sense, there are applications that focus more on the presence of additives and others on the percentage of macronutrients or nutritional quality.

Is the information reliable?

Yes, as long as before using these applications we know their classification criteria and we know how to distinguish between those that have been developed by a team of nutrition professionals. If we don't inform ourselves properly, there is the possibility of receiving misinformation and rejecting foods that are actually healthy as they exist. Although we can also consider healthy products that really are not.

On the other hand, there is a certain risk in the use of these applications since they can generate a certain phobia of components or additives that, although the application does not consider them safe, in reality they are. Also, having so much access to information can exacerbate the degree of obsession with healthy eating, especially in people with a tendency to eating disorders.

When should we use them?

The intention of these applications is to reach Quality information to consumers to prevent their purchase from being made based on product availability, price or brand. Its usefulness should be limited to identifying only products whose composition we doubt. At the end of the day, if we want to carry out a healthy purchase, there is a universal premise, choose natural market foods and fewer supermarket products.

• The same food can be classified as healthy or not depending on the application that is being used.
• We can trust them as long as we know that they have been developed by a team of nutrition professionals.
• Its usefulness should focus on identifying the products about which we have doubts.

Judith Torrell Diploma in Human Nutrition Clinical Nutrition Specialist