How scoring works

Four colours

• 75–100 · Excellent

  A keep. Everyday food, a calm cream, an honest bag of kibble.

• 50–74 · Good

  Fine sometimes. There is usually a better neighbour in the same aisle.

• 25–49 · Poor

  A treat, not a habit.

• 0–24 · Avoid

  Leave it. The swap is close by.

Food

Half the number is the nutrition box. A quarter is the extras on the list. A fifth is how processed the pack is. Organic adds a little — it cannot rescue a sugary drink. Then ceilings apply, so a weak box or a high-concern extra cannot hide behind a pretty mix.

• Nutrition quality · 50%

  Energy, sugars, saturated fat and salt pull the number down. Fibre, protein and fruit or vegetables lift it. Drinks are judged more strictly than solids. Water sits at the top. A letter E box — a cola, a candy — cannot be rated Good, no matter what else is true.

• Ingredients · 25%

  High-concern extras (nitrites, some dyes in a child pack) knock the list hard. Moderate extras knock it less. A quiet kitchen list holds it up. One high-concern extra, or a cluster of moderate ones, keeps the pack at Poor. Two high-concern extras mean Avoid.

• How processed · 20%

  Just food, a kitchen staple, simply made, or ultra-processed. A factory recipe — flavours, colours, many additives — cannot be rated Good. With a weak nutrition box it is Poor.

• Organic · 5%

  A verified organic mark adds a small bonus. It cannot rescue a sugary drink or a nitrite ham.

The council — three locks Yuka does not have

A dietitian, an additive scientist, and a shopper would agree on these. They are not a paid board. They are rules that cannot be bought.

• A weak nutrition box cannot be Good

  Nutri-Score 2023 — including the drink-sweetener penalty — is half the number. A cola is a weak box. That is the ceiling.

• Ultra-processed food cannot be Good

  Yuka can still paint a chip yellow. We will not. A factory recipe is a treat, not a habit. Doritos is the proof.

• One high-concern extra cannot hide

  Nitrites, some dyes, a paraben on a cream. Watch-outs sit on the pack without extra taps. Pregnancy and child notes do not wait for a profile.

On every pack we also say where it sits in its aisle, and — for a drink or a chip — what a real serving is, not just per 100 g. A can of cola is a dessert. Per 100 ml pretends it isn’t.

The live camera lives on the home screen. Ongoing pulls are on Recalls.

How processed — four groups

This is the NOVA system, from public-health research. It asks how far a pack is from a kitchen, not how many calories it has. Healthie uses it as a fifth of the food number, and as a hard limit: ultra-processed food cannot be rated Good.

• Just food

  An apple, oats, a piece of fish, plain yogurt, frozen peas. One ingredient, or close. This is the baseline.

• Kitchen staple

  Oil, sugar, salt, flour, butter. You cook with these. They are not a meal.

• Simply made

  Bread, cheese, tinned tomatoes, smoked fish. A few extra steps. Still recognisable as food.

• Ultra-processed

  Flavours, colours, emulsifiers, a list you could not shop. Doritos, cola, most bars. One pack is not poison. A diet of them crowds out real food — so we will not call them Good.

How this compares

Other labels answer one question. Healthie answers three, then puts a lock on the door so a factory chip cannot wear a green disc.

• Nutri-Score (the EU nutrition letter)

  Looks only at the nutrition box — energy, sugars, saturated fat, salt, fibre, protein, fruit. A pack of chips can land a middling letter if salt is not terrible. It does not read additives. It does not know ultra-processed. We use this as half the number, not the whole verdict.

• NOVA (how processed)

  Looks only at the recipe. Unsweetened soy milk and a bag of Doritos can both be ultra-processed. Nutrition is invisible. We use this as a fifth of the number, and as a lock: group 4 cannot be Good.

• Yuka

  Nutrition about 60%, additives 30%, organic 10%. No processing lock. That is why a flavoured chip can still come out yellow. Healthie is stricter on factory recipes.

• Health Star Rating

  A 0.5–5 star mark used in Australia and New Zealand. Industry-influenced, and it can reward low-fat reformulations that still carry a long additive list. We do not use it.

• Healthie

  Nutrition half, extras a quarter, processing a fifth, organic a little. Then locks: a weak box cannot be Good; ultra-processed cannot be Good; one high-concern extra cannot hide. Same 0–100 for food, beauty, and pet.

Alongside the number

• How processed

  Just food, a kitchen staple, simply made, or ultra-processed. If your grandmother wouldn’t recognise the list, it’s the last one.

• Sugar, salt, fat colours

  Low, medium, high — per 100 g, the way a front-of-pack label would.

• Planet

  A rough mark from organic farming, processing, palm oil and a few heavy extras. Not a full life-cycle study — a compass.

Beauty

The lowest-rated ingredient sets the ceiling. One high-concern extra can keep a pretty bottle out of the green. Hormone-signal flags, pregnancy notes, and child notes sit beside the number — they never inflate it.

• High concern

  Ceiling 24

  Parabens, BHT, lilial, triclosan

• Worth watching

  Ceiling 49

  Some PEGs, phenoxyethanol, SLS

• Low concern

  Ceiling 74

  Fragrance, linalool, limonene

• No concern

  Ceiling 75–100

  Water, glycerin, shea, aloe

Pet

The bowl and the extras share the number — 40% named-meat protein, 40% controversial extras (BHA, dyes, propylene glycol, nitrites). How processed is 15%. Organic adds a little. Same 0–100 scale as the rest of the shop. A dye in a dog bowl is a hard no.

Better neighbours

When something scores below 75, we look in the same aisle for a product at 75 or above that is most like it — same job, cleaner list. Ranked by how close the recipe and nutrition sit, not by who paid.

Where the data comes from

Our shelves first. Then public product facts — millions of food, beauty, and pet barcodes. A pack that isn’t here yet is looked up when you scan it.

Shelf prices come from Open Prices, the public receipt and tag log. Sign in and scans, saved packs, and your notes follow you to the next phone.

Product facts from open data contributors. Healthie is a reading aid, not a diagnosis. How to read a score

Method 2026.09.13