Nutri-Score, explained (and where it falls short)
That green A-to-E scale you see on some UK packaging is called Nutri-Score. It's a genuinely useful idea — with a real blind spot worth understanding.
How it's calculated
Nutri-Score works by taking a single 100g/100ml reference amount of a product and running it through a points formula: it adds points for things you'd want less of — sugar, saturated fat, salt, calories — and subtracts points for things like fibre, protein, and the proportion of fruit, vegetables, nuts, or pulses. The final points total maps to a letter grade from A (green) to E (red).
What it gets right
As a single glance at a shelf full of similar products, it works. Comparing two breakfast cereals side by side, the one with a better Nutri-Score genuinely tends to have less sugar and more fibre. It's a real, independently-calculated summary, not marketing spin — and for a quick "which of these two is probably better," it does its job.
Where it falls short
The core issue is that Nutri-Score produces exactly one grade, calculated the same way for everyone — it has no idea what you personally care about. If you're managing your salt intake specifically because of blood pressure, a product could get a solid B while still being fairly high in salt, because the formula is balancing that against decent fibre and protein elsewhere. The grade is an average across several nutrients; averages hide exactly the thing you might be trying to watch.
It also can't flag an allergen you personally need to avoid, and it says nothing at all about additives — a product can score a perfect A while containing several additives, because additives simply aren't part of the formula.
The better question isn't "what's the score" — it's "is this bad for me, specifically"
This is the actual gap Olive Avocado is built around. Instead of one grade calculated the same way for every person, it starts by asking what you actually care about — sugar, salt, saturated fat, ultra-processing, protein, fibre, or calories, in whatever combination matters to you — and weighs the verdict against that. It also checks your specific allergens and surfaces the additive list Nutri-Score never touches, so a product that's fine on the shelf-label grade but wrong for you specifically doesn't slip through.