Food Industry Wrestles With Shopping App

 

"Yuka is a mobile app. It features an orange carrot icon and lets users scan product bar codes. For food, it generates a score from one to 100 based on nutritional quality, additives and whether it is organic.

Shoppers like Young heed Yuka's advice. The 77-year-old entrepreneur said he has sworn off Hellmann's mayonnaise ever since the app pointed out that it is made with calcium disodium EDTA, a synthetic additive used to preserve foods.

"I used to live on the stuff," Young said of Hellmann's "real" variety, which Yuka rates a 15, or "bad." Now he uses butter instead.

Some in the food industry see the future of food labeling in Yuka and similar mobile apps. As consumers increasingly scroll their phones to decide what to eat, such apps are one way to render immediate judgment on a product. Often, they suggest what they deem to be healthier alternatives.

Already food-scanning apps are changing what grocers sell and consumers buy, and prompting some manufacturers to reformulate their products to boost scores.

Adoption of the apps has been fueled by the same skepticism toward food ingredients, companies and regulators that animates the "Make America Healthy Again" movement spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump's Health and Human Services secretary.

"I use Yuka. My wife uses it," Kennedy said in late April. HHS plans to encourage other companies to develop similar apps, he said.

The apps' growing popularity poses a new challenge for food companies. Chicago-based Conagra, maker of Healthy Choice frozen meals, says its products are among the healthiest in the category -- low in fat, calories and sodium, with high-quality protein and no artificial colors.

Yuka, however, recently rated 12 out of 16 Healthy Choice products at a Chicago supermarket as "poor," due in part to additives such as sodium phosphate and carrageenan. Products under the brand's Simply Steamers line, which tend to have more protein and fewer additives, received an "excellent" rating.

Conagra Chief Executive Sean Connolly said that no one app is the authority over nutrition. "There are a lot of opinions out there," he said, adding that the opinions that matter most to Conagra are those of its consumers.

But Conagra's consumers use Yuka, too. Thousands have complained about additives found in the company's products, using a feature on the app that enables shoppers to shoot off a predrafted message via email or social media asking food makers to remove additives.

Companies including Campbell's and Chobani have responded to such requests concerning dipotassium phosphate or other additives, according to emails viewed by The Wall Street Journal. They largely defend the use of their ingredients, citing federal approval.

Chobani said it appreciates and encourages consumers' feedback. The company said that after two years of work, its oat milk recipe -- which had included dipotassium phosphate -- now contains only natural ingredients.

Campbell's declined to comment. Unilever, which makes Hellman's, didn't respond to a request for comment.

Julie Chapon, Yuka's chief executive, said the app's goal is to equip consumers with information to drive manufacturers to improve products more quickly. "Regulations can be very slow to change," she said.

Yuka launched in France in 2017 and in the U.S. three years later. Nearly one-third of Yuka's 68 million users are in the U.S., Chapon said, and an average of 25,000 new U.S. users have joined daily since the start of the year. At the beginning of May, it ranked as the No. 1 health-and-fitness app in Apple's app store.

Chapon and her two co-founders moved to New York in 2023 to manage what she said is now a roughly $7 million business globally. Yuka's rating system is based on a nutrition label used in some European countries, plus recommendations by global health organizations and independent studies reviewed by the app's scientific team.

Chapon said the app isn't affiliated with the MAHA movement.

She said that in France, the number of additives in food products declined as Yuka grew in popularity. Noting the app's influence, French supermarket chain Intermarche since 2019 has reformulated more than 1,100 products, removing about 140 additives.

Besides Yuka, similar tools include the Bobby Approved app, developed by social-media influencer and food personality Bobby Parrish, which gives groceries a thumbs-up or thumbs-down based on ingredients. Health-tech startup FoodHealth Company has created a scoring system that is embedded into the apps of retailers like Kroger.

The Consumer Brands Association, which represents food manufacturers, offers its own scanning tool called SmartLabel, which provides nutrition information but doesn't provide ratings or recommendations.

Critics said apps like Yuka still need work. Their results are often flawed and require better food databases and government standards, said Jerold Mande, an adjunct nutrition professor at Harvard and former Food and Drug Administration official who helped design its nutrition facts label.

Still, Mande, who uses Yuka and Open Food Facts when he shops, said the apps are set for a bigger following.

Chapon said that Yuka's methodology isn't perfect. She said nutrition is complex, and that the company is working to educate consumers more broadly through its blog and other forums.

Jack McNamara, CEO of seltzer maker Tru, said he first learned about Yuka while handing out samples at a Los Angeles Costco. Shoppers began pulling out their phones and scanning Tru's bar code.

Yuka gives Tru drinks a score of 43 or 48 out of 100 -- "poor" -- in part because they contain stevia and erythritol, sweeteners that Yuka says carry risks. McNamara said he doesn't fully agree with Yuka's methodology, which deducts points for drinks that aren't water, but he takes the app's input seriously.

"Platforms like [Yuka] are going to have massive repercussions," McNamara said.

Tru, which he said rates better than many competitors, is trialing new versions of its drinks that would fetch higher scores, using less or none of the sweeteners.” [1]

1.  Food Industry Wrestles With Shopping App. Newman, Jesse.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 05 May 2025: B1.