The Food Compass, a comprehensive nutrient profiling system introduced in 2021, has been updated based on new nutritional data and scientific feedback. In an October 8 Nature Food study, researchers at the Food is Medicine Institute at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University detail changes to the Food Compass 2.0 algorithm and how they further improve and validate the scoring of foods, beverages, and meals on a scale from 1 (least healthy) to 100 (most healthy).
The Food Compass responds to a need for tools to better distinguish differences in the healthfulness of items that appear to have similar nutrition, reflecting the protective or harmful impacts of specific ingredients, processing methods, nutrients, and bioactive components. Comparing the new algorithm’s rankings of 9,000 foods to the original version, the researchers observed improved rankings for items containing more dietary fiber, dairy fat, or omega-3 fatty acids, and lower scoring for ultra-processed foods and those with non-nutritive sweeteners and other additives.
The changes led to higher average scores for categories of minimally processed items such as seafood (72 to 81), eggs (46 to 54), rice and pasta (43 to 49), and beef (33 to 44). Processed foods and beverages saw the greatest drops, including fruit juices (72 to 66), cereal bars (42 to 34) and cold cereals (51 to 41).
“Nutrition is a rapidly evolving field, which means our understanding of dietary health keeps improving,” said first author Eden Barrett, a research fellow with the Food is Medicine Institute, who is based at The George Institute for Global Health in Australia. “Food Compass was designed to adapt to these changes, which is the strength of the system and why updates like this are important.”
Food Compass 2.0 is a versatile tool, capable of rating individual foods as well as mixed meals and whole diets. For instance, while white rice alone scores 23, a meal with white rice, lean meat, and vegetables scores 70. The researchers also used the tool to analyze the average diet of nearly 50,000 American adults, finding the average score was 36.6, indicating poor overall nutrition. People whose diets included more higher scoring items had improved health profiles, lower risk of prevalent disease conditions like diabetes and obesity, and a lower likelihood of early death.
“Food rating systems are increasingly common around the world,” said senior author Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute and Jean Mayer Professor of Nutrition at the Friedman School. “The updated Food Compass system has many advantages over existing systems, providing a tool that can help guide individuals toward healthier eating, and organizations toward healthier portfolios. It should be used alongside other dietary guidelines, personalized advice, and cultural preferences to assess similar-appearing foods for their overall health impact.”
Looking ahead, the research team plans to further enhance usability of the Food Compass by developing a method to score products based on readily available nutrient and ingredient information on the package, as well as adapting the algorithm to different world regions to broaden its applicability.
-- By Joseph Caputo
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Citation: Complete information on authors, funders, methodology and conflicts of interest is available in the published paper.
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