Joining the food-label scan club

Homeschooling mother of three Sophia Dastrup considers herself in the “partially crunchy” mom camp.

Until recently, the Peoria, Ariz., resident added Kodiak protein pancake mix to muffins for her three kids. She viewed the mix as relatively healthy—that is, until she scanned the box with a smartphone app called Yuka, where she learned the mix had monocalcium phosphates and a lot of sodium.

Yuka scores food and cosmetics on a 100-point scale based on nutrition quality and additives and whether the product is organic. Yuka gave Kodiak Power Cakes a paltry 27.

“Some of the products that we really did think were listed as clean and safe actually had a ton of sugar that maybe wasn’t portrayed as so on the labels,” said Dastrup.

Apps like Yuka that detail problematic ingredients and offer product swap suggestions have gained popularity among Christian parents like Dastrup looking to feed their families responsibly. But health is complicated, and some nutrition experts question whether such apps oversimplify the makings of a balanced diet.

Congress first mandated nutrition labels in 1990, and the Food and Drug Administration has issued several updates to standard labels since then. Some companies voluntarily include “Facts Up Front” icons to detail calories, saturated fats, sodium, and added sugar at a glance. The federal government may make front-of-package labels mandatory soon. In January, the FDA proposed requiring manufacturers to prominently display saturated fat, sodium, and added sugar as “Low,” “Medium,” or “High.”

According to a survey published in May by global health organization NSF, 1 in 5 U.S. consumers struggles to understand nutrition labels. Government mandates only go so far, according to David Andrews, chief science officer at the Environmental Working Group, a public health advocacy nonprofit. “Regulation is really instrumental in driving transparency,” Andrews said. “But where the apps can go a step further is by providing comparison and guidance.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seems to agree. While announcing a federal ban on eight petroleum-­based food dyes in April, Kennedy told reporters, “We’re going to encourage companies that develop apps … mothers can go in, they can scan a barcode of every product in their grocery store, and they can know what’s in it and what’s not.” (Kennedy mentioned he and his wife use Yuka.)

Yuka offers product swap recommendations for low-scoring items. Yuka

First launched in France in 2017, Yuka provides analysis for more than 4 million food and beauty products. More than 72 million users have installed the app. Along with giving foods a numerical score, Yuka gives “excellent” foods a green dot, “poor” ones an orange dot, and “bad” products a red dot. Companies can’t pay Yuka to improve scores.

Yuka boasts the highest number of downloads of any grocery scanning app, but other apps like Think Dirty also evaluate personal care items. The Environmental Working Group’s Healthy Living app has a database of roughly 160,000 food, cleaning, and cosmetic products. Like Yuka, Healthy Living evaluates items based on nutrition and what additives have been included. Yuka, Healthy Living, and Think Dirty all offer product swap recommendations.

Yuka’s 2024 impact report includes testimonials from four companies, including beauty brand Caudalie, that say they are cleaning up their products to better align with the app’s health criteria. But for the most part, “Companies don’t want to directly admit when they change away from an ingredient,” said Andrews.

Certified health coach and Delray Beach, Fla., native Illie Balaj sells nontoxic beauty products from brands like Boka and 100% Pure from an online storefront. She hasn’t checked how Yuka scores any of the brands she sells. “It’s definitely not my north star,” said Balaj.

She believes food scanning apps don’t give a full picture about what’s inside a product. For example, Yuka gives certain orange juice brands a bad rating just because of high caloric content.

If it’s a skincare product, for instance, additives like preservatives aren’t automatically bad, says Balaj. She views the better question as, “Is it serving the purpose that it needs to serve?”

Registered dietitian Kacie Barnes agrees that Yuka can promote unnecessary fears about additives and may even prompt health-conscious users to moralize foods. “I’m around other educated moms and moms who care about nutrition,” said Barnes. “It’s making them see foods as very much good or bad, and I don’t like to approach food that way, because then it starts to feel restrictive.”

Yuka has definitely encouraged Sophia Dastrup to avoid certain items. Since downloading Yuka about a year ago, she has swapped products like Annie’s boxed mac and cheese for Goodles and Celsius energy drinks for Yerba Madre. She spends more on groceries than she used to, since most of the alternatives Yuka suggests are pricier.

Still, she says she doesn’t feel pressured by the app’s guidance, and she doesn’t want to give her children that impression either. “We don’t want to be living fearfully, like, ‘Oh, we can’t eat any of this stuff. We’re all going to die,’” laughed Dastrup. “We let our kiddos know that moderation is key with all things.”