Barcode scanner apps reveal truth about food, cosmetics
1 of 2 | Food barcode scanner apps such as the French-made Yuka that provide nutritional ratings based on a products’ ingredients are soaring in popularity, empowering consumers and prompting the food industry to become more transparent, according to a pair of recent studies. Photo courtesy Yuka
Consumers might notice more people these days taking cellphone photos of products on supermarket shelves. What they actually are doing is checking those products via their bar codes to determine how healthy or unhealthy they are.
Such checking clears away the haze of advertising and label claims and gets down to the basic question: Is this product nutritional or safe or is it potentially harmful?
The soaring popularity of smartphone apps that scan barcodes on food products and cosmetics to provide health scores are empowering consumers and shifting dynamics in their respective industries, recent studies suggest.
The apps, which display independently researched health information about ingredients of packaged food items and cosmetics are tapping into consumers’ mistrust of big corporations and providing an important means of buyer empowerment, according to a pair of recent French studies.
The studies — one released in March and another in September — each determined, among other things, that food scanner apps are effective in encouraging healthier eating and that they are seen by users as triggering a “shift in power,” forcing companies to improve the quality of their products to regain trust.
Their results were released as the soaring popularity of diet and nutrition apps continues to gather steam. They had seen more than 200 million downloads globally as of the start of this year, according to Market.us Media, demonstrating the “substantial demand for health-oriented mobile solutions.”
Among the barcode scanner apps, by far the most popular is Yuka, launched by a team of young French entrepreneurs in 2017. Yuka co-founders Julie Chapon, Benoît Martin and François Martin tout their financial independence from the food industry to boost the credibility of the app’s ratings system.
Its mission, they say, is to help consumers through “conscious purchasing” to “leverage their buying power to drive the agro-food and cosmetics industries toward improving their products’ compositions.”
To use the app, consumers need only to scan the barcodes of food and cosmetic products. A proprietary algorithm then produces a score from 1-to-100, which it slots into four color-coded categories: green (excellent), light green (good), orange (average) and red (bad). Those products that generate a red code are accompanied by a list of healthier alternatives.
The basic app functions are free for users, while a premium subscription allows users to access more features, providing what Yuka says is its only operating income.
Yuka was launched in North America in January 2022 and now is available in 12 countries with more than 55 million users. The company said last year the United States is its fastest-growing market, adding nearly 600,000 new users monthly, with 25 products scanned every second.
Other popular food barcode scanner apps include Bobby Approved, Fig, FoodSwitch, Food Scan Genius and Trash Panda, each of which offers a somewhat different take on the main function of providing heath ratings for product ingredients.
One of the recent French studies published in March found that such apps performed better than “front-of-pack” labeling at prompting healthier food choices when the users express “distrust” of dominant food industry players.
That’s most likely because the apps have a high credibility factor due to their independently sourced health scores at a time when large corporations and public authorities are increasingly viewed with skepticism by the public, the authors found.
“Food scanner apps such as Yuka offer consumers the opportunity to be proactive and interact in multiple ways: through scanning, access to detailed information, recommendations for alternative products, and the ability to personalize options and participate in crowdsourcing,” study co-author Marie-Eve Laporte, a professor and healthcare researcher at Université Paris-Saclay, told UPI.
“Consumers thus have a greater sense of control, a better understanding of their environment, and an increased ability to actively participate in decision making. This means they have a higher level of consumer empowerment,” she said.
“Many consumers perceive large corporations as ‘biblical Goliaths.’ They have a growing distrust of them and of public authorities. This is fueled by the proliferation of business-related conspiracy theories, which tend to portray large corporations as manipulating public opinion with the help of the authorities and engaging in unfair competition with local small businesses.”
Laporte said her research found that “Yuka users, at least in France, see this app as a militant, independent, small, local start-up fighting big food corporations and helping consumers get fairer access to information about their food and regain control over what they eat: a David fighting a Goliath.
“For these distrustful consumers, food scanner apps like Yuka are a more effective tool than official [front-of-pack] nutrition signals to guide them toward healthier food choices,” she said.
Her findings reinforced those of another French study of Yuka published in September. After conducting a thematic text analysis of 1,651 user reviews and 117 media articles, the authors concluded that such apps “trigger a shift in power, forcing companies to improve the quality of their products to regain consumer trust.”
On May 1, another food scanning app, the GreenChoice Food Scanner, announced a partnership with the largest full-service grocery wholesaler in North America to integrate its health ratings service into the operations of independent grocery retailers across the country.
Like Yuka, GreenChoice emphasizes its “100% independence” from the food brands it rates, and notes its is a public benefit company “guaranteeing that product analysis must be objective and free of conflict of interest.” The app uses AI to “process vetted nutrition and sustainability research and analyze food products’ health and sustainability impacts” via “GreenScores.”
GreenChoice founder and CEO Galen Karlan-Mason told UPI the app, along with a grocery shelf labeling system produced by the company, have received the attention of food producers who say they want to use healthier ingredients because of the new informational power at the fingertips of consumers.
“We’ve heard from many brands seeking to understand how they can improve their products’ GreenScores because they understand they are in a very competitive market, and brands who offer clean products without harmful additives will be rewarded when you give people transparency and choice,” he said.
“We have driven double-digit sales lifts for healthier options at retailers who have deployed our food GreenScores on-shelf. And many users of our free GreenChoice app have shared stories of using [it] to scan and make healthy swaps throughout their fridge and pantry.”
Karlan-Mason added that when consumers know what’s in their food, “they improve the healthfulness of what they buy. I believe as a result of growing demand for transparency in the food industry, GreenChoice will drive positive change in our food supply and assist in improving public health.”