In the biscuit aisle of a Hyper U supermarket west of Paris, Nathalie holds her phone up to a packet of her 12-year-old son Malo's favourite biscuits. The screen flashes red: 0/100. ‘Look at that!’ she says, pointing to four additives, including E450, which she reads aloud can lead to bone marrow and kidney problems if taken in excess. ‘Honestly, that they can put this sort of thing in food aimed at children drives me nuts!’
Nathalie is one of a growing number using Yuka, an app developed in France that lets shoppers scan barcodes for a traffic-light health rating – green for good, red for bad – plus detailed nutritional info. Since its launch in 2015, Yuka has amassed 85 million users across 12 countries. The UK is its third-biggest market, with about five million users, behind France (six million) and the US (28 million).
“Five million Britons use Yuka, a French app that scans food barcodes to rate healthiness, as users like Nathalie face trade-offs.”
In the US, Yuka has a high-profile fan: Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, says it’s his favourite app. Three years ago, co-founder and CEO Julie Chapon moved from France to the States because the app was doing so well. ‘I’m thrilled to be in a country where there is still so much progress to be made,’ she says, diplomatically.
For Nathalie, using Yuka has changed her habits. She ends up buying more organic products, which are more expensive. And Malo hates shopping with her: ‘You spend ages scanning and he can never have what he wants.’ The app’s database covers about six million products, with 1,200 new ones added daily.
Yuka is part of a wider food-tracking phenomenon. In 2012, French programmer Stéphane Gigandet launched Open Food Facts, a free, online crowdsourced database of food products. As Yuka expands, it raises questions about how much influence an app should have over what we put in our shopping baskets – and whether the trade-off between health and cost is one that all shoppers can afford.