One step closer to healthy products: Nutri-Score and healthy product innovation

The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport wants manufacturers to change the composition of food products to make them healthier. Previous agreements with the industries, among other things, reduced the amount of sugar in soft drinks. Salt intake among adults, on the other hand, was still too high, a recent report showed. What further measures will be taken to make products healthier?

Nutri-Score

The Nutri-Score logo is expected to be introduced in the Netherlands in the second half of 2022. This logo was found to best support consumers in healthy choices compared to other health scores, and only Nutri-Score will therefore become a recognized food choice logo for Dutch food producers. Nutri-Score is calculated based on the nutritional value and product composition, such as amount of fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts. Based on that, it can be given a score between A and E. As a brand owner, do you choose to place the logo? Then you must place the logo on all your products and not just a part of them. Moreover, it is mandatory to sign up for the food choice logo and apply it to your packaging according to the rules. The exact rules will not be known until the logo is legally allowed in the Netherlands.

National Approach to Product Improvement

As part of the National Prevention Agreement, RIVM [NK1] this year published new criteria for the amount of salt, sugar and saturated fat in foods as the start of the National Approach to Product Improvement (NAPV) to stimulate and accelerate healthy product innovation. Three limits have been developed for sugar, salt and saturated fat so that manufacturers can improve products incrementally. This contributes to the goal of having 50% of products per product group in the best category by 2030 and no more than 10% in the worst in terms of salt, sugar or saturated fat. In addition, the NAPV intends to look at opportunities to reduce portion sizes, improve the composition of ready-to-eat meals and extend product improvement to all processed foods in, for example, restaurants.

Want to know more about Nutri-Score or healthy product innovation?

Do you already know if you want to apply the Nutri-Score to your products? And do you want to know what opportunities there are to improve the Nutri-Score on your products? Or do you want to know how you can contribute to healthy product innovation? Call or email us for no-obligation advice. For more information, contact us at +31 (0)30 - 65 66 010 or email info@precongroup.com.