The new apps swaying consumer food choices

More vague claims are even trickier. Are low-fat products necessarily good for you? And does high in fibre mean the product provides your entire recommended daily allowance?

There’s huge variation in the way individual shoppers interpret ‘low’ and ‘high’, and it’s affected by whether the claim is being made about positive ingredients like protein and fibre, or negative ones like sodium and fat, a 2019 University of Essex study found. “Many shoppers find food labels confusing and this is actually leading to a lot of people not really understanding what they’re eating,” researchers concluded.

Add to that mixed product claims about sustainability, carbon impact and company ethics – even more difficult to measure and far more loosely regulated – and consumers’ heads are left spinning.

Little wonder, then, that shoppers are seeking guidance. Cue a slew of third-party apps that promise to offer just that with simply the scan of a barcode. From Yuka to Giki and Setai, these apps set out to empower the shopper with independent scores– which often determine which product they pick up from the shelf.

Yuka, which launched in France in 2017, is one of the biggest. Julie Chapon developed the app in partnership with founder brothers Benoit and François Martin, and says the idea came about because shoppers needed “a degree to be able to decipher the labels”.

The app – which has 20 million users in 11 countries – is able to scan barcodes in the aisles to provide an overall evaluation of the health impact of products. The evaluation – a score out of 100 – is accompanied by a visual colour-coded indicator (red = bad to green = good) and a more detailed analysis of each ingredient.

It helps consumers avoid getting “lost in a dietary jungle trying to decipher every label”, Chapon says.

Now it’s expanding. Yuka added analysis of cosmetics and hygiene lines in 2018 in response to user demand. It makes sense given that getting to grips with beauty product labels is “even more challenging as the ingredients are written using their scientific names… in Latin”, says Chapon.

Yuka also added an ‘eco-score’ in March – currently only available in France – that analyses the impact of products on the environment.

Rival app Giki goes one step further on the environmental front. Launched in 2018, it wants to “help people live more sustainably through finding ‘better’ products – better defined as more sustainable” says Ian Yates of Impact Score, which acquired Giki in July.

At a product level, the Giki app – which has had 100,000 downloads but aims to secure one million users within the next 12 months – assesses up to 14 different criteria.

The type of product will determine the assessment measures used, but they include things like use of sustainable palm oil; recyclable packaging; animal welfare, and whether it contains any chemicals of concern. Products get badges on factors they score well in, and alternatives are displayed to aid consumers’ buying decisions.

Later this year, Giki will incorporate information from Impact Score – which instead of rating products, rates companies based on how they treat their staff, suppliers and the environment.

“Bringing together our two applications will provide consumers with 360-degree insight into the ethical and sustainable credentials of products, manufacturers and retailers. With this information to hand, people can really change how they live and influence businesses’ behaviour,” says Giki co-founder James Hand.

Meanwhile, app Setai looks to marry nutritional and ethical information on one platform. It gives products a straightforward score out of 10 on health. That sits alongside a CO2 score for individual products, which co-founder Edoardo Danieli describes as “an innovation in the app world”.

Users see a single serving of the scanned product as a percentage of their daily emissions ‘budget’, with equivalents in distance driven by a petrol car and time a light is left on.

Read more | How to spot greenwashing and why brands were caught out

“As customers, we have the power to steer the political agenda and promote sustainable products. In order to do so, we need to know the environmental impact of what we buy, especially food,” says Danieli. “Users are willing to change their behaviour to make more sustainable choices. But there is a lack of information regarding the impact on the environment of what they buy.”

Even when consumers do get information on packs, they don’t necessarily believe it. Shoppers are increasingly wary of claims made by big businesses on nutritional benefits and ecological breakthroughs.

“Consumers are asking for more transparency: all the food scandals over the past years have fuelled mistrust of consumers towards the food industry, so they use Yuka to go beyond marketing and check what really goes into the products,” says Chapon.

In essence, Yuka and its ilk play the role of a trusted third party not linked to a retailer or brand, and with no angle on the data displayed. And that matters. According to a YouGov survey, when asked who they trust most to publish data on a company’s ethics and emissions, most people said a third party. That’s a higher level of trust than there is in the government or the companies themselves.

“There are no common sustainability measuring methods – businesses appear to be on different paths saying different things, and there is the whole greenwashing issue, so consumers lack trust in what businesses say,” says Yates.

“It’s only going to get worse,” he suggests. “Every ad is about how green a product is, and people don’t know who to trust. They are looking for a credible, independent source of data from a company who cares about the same things they do.”