Deulonder has tested two apps that guide the consumer when filling our shopping cart.

In the well-stocked aisles of supermarkets, it is often difficult to choose the best product. We allow ourselves to be seduced by a good presentation, by a misleading advertising that sells us products as healthy when, in reality, they are not so healthy. New and practical applications offer information on the quality of food and help us to decipher its composition without the need to be chemists or nutritional experts. In Deulonder, always attentive to the news regarding the world of cooking in general, he has analyzed the pros and cons of two of the most outstanding apps: Yuka, which was established in Spain in 2019 and has been making a gap, and El CoCo-Come Sano, a young company from Barcelona.

Yuka is an application that offers detailed information on the composition of products. Thanks to a simple scan, we will get a quick rating that goes from 0 to 100: bad, mediocre, good and excellent. To reach this score, aspects such as additives, saturated fats, salt, proteins, fibers, calories or sugar are evaluated. With just a glance, the analysis allows to distinguish if the product in question has too many sugars or some preservative of high risk for the health.

To qualify food, three criteria are taken into account: nutritional quality, following a calculation method based on the Nutri Score, designed as part of the Nutritional Health and Nutrition Program; the additives, classified as «high risk», «medium risk», «limited risk» and «green risk» and, finally, the ecological dimension of the product. In this sense, products considered organic and bearing the European organic label (Eurohoja) or have the USDA organic seal are taken into account. Furthermore, healthier «alternatives» to the scanned product are proposed and the search history can be preserved. The advantages of this application, valued with a 4.8 out of 5 by 22 thousand votes, is the clarity of the exhibition. With a traffic light method – from red to green – you can quickly see if a product is healthy or not. It offers alternatives and also includes cosmetic products such as bath gels and shampoos. This application of French origin is an independent project that already has 18 million users.

At the moment, Yuka has one million products analyzed: 700,000 food products and 300,000 cosmetics. However, they have not analyzed alcoholic beverages such as wines and beers. You can download the application for free and also subscribe to the Premium for 14’99 euros / year, a category that allows access to a search bar, an offline mode and an unlimited history. In this sense, products considered organic and bearing the European organic label (Eurohoja) or have the USDA organic seal are taken into account. Furthermore, healthier «alternatives» to the scanned product are proposed and the search history can be preserved. The advantages of this application, valued with a 4.8 out of 5 by 22 thousand votes, is the clarity of the exhibition. With a traffic light method – from red to green – you can quickly see if a product is healthy or not. It offers alternatives and also includes cosmetic products such as bath gels and shampoos. This application of French origin is an independent project that already has 18 million users.

The CoCo Come Sano is a free application that aims to promote more conscious consumption. Thanks to a simple scanning system, the consumer can access the nutritional analysis of the content. Here the score goes from 1 to 10 and is warned when a product is not recommended for children, either because it is ultra-processed, because it is high in calories or because it has a high level of sugars. They also point out the ingredients with the greatest impact on global warming.

Behind El CoCo Come Sano there is a team established in Barcelona and has the advice of Juan Revenga, biologist and dietician-nutritionist. One of the peculiarities is that it detects the additives but these do not have an impact on the final grade of the products so as not to generate chemofobia. According to those responsible, additives per se are not a problem, but products with a «low nutritional profile».

With more than 15,000 products in its database, the concept of this young company is based on the sharing economy. This allows the users themselves to increase the database, upload the information of food products that are not yet cataloged and the app will proceed to their qualification. The CoCo Come Sano has a note of 4.6 out of 5 through 1.3 thousand evaluations. This app insists on the calories in the products, so it’s very practical for dieters. However, the number of products in the database is small compared to other applications.