Portuguese retailer and Vertex Award Wwinner Pingo Doce has begun including Nutri-Score nutrition ratings on its Retail Brand products helping consumers to make more conscious and informed food choices.

The Nutri-Score is a nutritional symbol on the front of food product packaging, which provides information on the nutritional profile of food. In practice, this logo allows consumers to make better food choices more easily, as well as comparing different products in the same range or category.

“Adhering to Nutri-Score is another step for Pingo Doce to promote health through food, one of our main missions. Our Private Brand has a wide range of products, subject to constant nutritional reformulations, in order to reduce the amount of salt, fat, and sugar they contain. It is a work that we have been developing for many years, with great transparency, and which is now being complemented with the adoption of this measure”, says Rita Manso, Commercial Director of the Private Brand Pingo Doce.

The classification of each product is obtained by comparing the nutrients and foods whose presence is most desired – such as fiber, proteins, fruits, and vegetables – and those whose presence should be more restricted – calories, saturated fat, sugar, and salt. The list of ingredients, including the additives, used, and the presence or absence of vitamins and minerals, are excluded from this evaluation.

The result obtained is then converted into the Nutri-Score scale, which varies between five colors, from dark green, associated with the letter A, which represents the products whose consumption we should favor, to red, associated with the letter E, which identifies products whose consumption should be more limited, always integrated into a diet that is varied and adjusted to individual needs. Nutri-Score applies to most processed products, except for herbs, teas, coffees, and yeasts.

This is yet another measure taken by Pingo Doce to ‘promote health through food ‘ – one of its strategic pillars of Social Responsibility – at a time when consumers are increasingly aware of the impact that food has on health.