Discriminating nutritional quality of foods using the 5-Color nutrition label in the French food market: consistency with nutritional recommendations

PURPOSE: Our objectives were to assess the performance of the 5-Colour nutrition label (5-CNL) front-of-pack nutrition label based on the Food Standards Agency nutrient profiling system to discriminate nutritional quality of foods currently on the market in France and its consistency with French nutritional recommendations. METHODS: Nutritional composition of 7777 foods available on the French market collected from the web-based collaborative project Open Food Facts were retrieved. Distribution of products across the 5-CNL categories according to food groups, as arranged in supermarket shelves was assessed. Distribution of similar products from different brands in the 5-CNL categories was also assessed. Discriminating performance was considered as the number of color categories present in each food group. In the case of discrepancies between the category allocation and French nutritional recommendations, adaptations of the original score were proposed. RESULTS: Overall, the distribution of foodstuffs in the 5-CNL categories was consistent with French recommendations: 95.4 % of ‘Fruits and vegetables’, 72.5 % of ‘Cereals and potatoes’ were classified as ‘Green’ or ‘Yellow’ whereas 86.0 % of ‘Sugary snacks’ were classified as ‘Pink’ or ‘Red’. Adaptations to the original FSA score computation model were necessary for beverages, added fats and cheese in order to be consistent with French official nutritional recommendations. CONCLUSION: The 5-CNL label displays a high performance in discriminating nutritional quality of foods across food groups, within a food group and for similar products from different brands. Adaptations from the original model were necessary to maintain consistency with French recommendations and high performance of the system. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12937-015-0090-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.