How many times do we see a packaged product in the shop which states it’s healthy, just to learn that it’s anything but the nutrition label? The marketing of foods like «low fat» or «no sugar added» might be easy but it still contains outrageous amounts of sugar, salt, and calories. This is the reason for the Meal Compass, a recent nutritional profile system developed by academics at Tuft University, which places every food on a system of absolute greatest foods for your health. Nature Food published the report.
The Food Compass has a one to 100 classification system, one is the least healthy and 100 is a great score. The evaluation of each 8,032 meals and drinks was based on the report: “54 qualities in 9 fields related to health: nutrition, vitamins, mineral products, dietary components, additives, processing, particular lipids, fibers and proteins and phytochemicals.
“We scored 54 attributes across 9 health-relevant domains: nutrient ratios, vitamins, minerals, food ingredients, additives, processing, specific lipids, fibre and protein, and phytochemicals. The domain scores were summed into a final Food Compass Score (FCS) ranging from 1 (least healthy) to 100 (most healthy) for all foods and beverages. Content validity was confirmed by assessing nutrients, food ingredients and other characteristics of public health concern; face validity was confirmed by assessing the FCS for 8,032 foods and beverages reported in NHANES/FNDDS 2015–16,” reads the report.
The list of “bad” food includes:
- Pastries
- White bread
- Candy
- Processed meats
- Energy drinks
- Soda
- Cocktails with fruit flavor
- Certain dressings
- Butter
- Cakes
When looking at a list of over8,000 products, it is obvious that many of the items generally regarded as healthy, such as fat-free labels, are the foods most commonly included in the list. This is probably because these sorts of meals have more additional sugars or chemicals to give them a nice taste and to prevent the natural fat normally produced by such foods, such as dressing oil or butterfat.
