What is the nutritional quality of the food we buy in Europe’s supermarkets?

The nutrient content displayed on labels of packaged food shows large differences across and within European countries and food categories, a new analytical JRC overview shows.  Efforts by the industry to improve the nutrient composition of foods are ongoing. However, sometimes improvement in one nutrient – like sugars, salt, fat or fibre – is offset by a worsening of another.

What we eat has a major impact on our health.  More than 88% of deaths and more than 84% of the total years of healthy life lost in the EU in 2023 were the result of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

Unhealthy diets, high in salt, sugar and fats, and low in dietary fibre, increase the risk of non-communicable diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

One of the most cost-effective ways to address unhealthy diets is through food reformulation. This means the food industry makes products with healthier profiles by reducing nutrients such as salt, sugars, and saturated fats, while increasing dietary fibre. To establish whether reformulation is taking place, at what pace, and where focus is needed, it is important to know the nutrient content of packaged foods and their changes over time. 

Until now, there hasn’t been a systematic, freely accessible overview of the nutrients’ composition of packaged foods. To help fill this gap, the JRC developed the Food and Beverages Label Explorer (FABLE), an online tool providing access to product-level information collected from food labels. 

FABLE hosts and helps visualise key data (e.g. nutrient composition and trends, ingredients) collected from labels of packaged foods and beverages. It makes data on branded food and beverages, collected through EU-funded projects, available for researchers, policy makers and the public, in an easy to read and understand format.