Nutri-Score effectiveness in improving consumers' nutrition literacy, food choices, health, and healthy eating pattern adherence: A systematic review

Front-of-pack labeling has been adopted as a public health measure to counteract increasing obesity and noncommunicable disease incidence. An increasing body of interest has recently focused on the Nutri-Score label; therefore, the purpose of this systematic review is to assess its effectiveness in enhancing nutrition literacy, consumers’ food choices, adherence to healthy patterns, and health status. Results reveal most studies are conducted in experimental settings with no evidence of nutrition literacy impact and nonsignificant or little effect sizes on eating patterns and health status improvement, particularly in real-life studies. Despite its underpinning algorithm being strongly associated with mortality risk, differences promoted by NutriScore in shopping basket nutrient composition appear limited to saturated fats and sodium with very small effect sizes; moreover, C, D, and E categories seem ineffective in changing consumers’ purchases. These findings suggest that expectations for Nutri-Score might be scaled down and require careful consideration for future development in this area.