Nutri-Score food labelling appears increasingly on Estonian store shelves

The Nutri-Score food labelling system, already widespread across several European countries, is appearing with increasing frequency on Estonian supermarket shelves. The system uses a five-letter scale with colour coding to help consumers make healthier food choices. Hellika Kallaste, adviser at the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture, explains how the labelling works.

Estonian store shelves are seeing the colourful five-letter Nutri-Score food labelling system appear with growing frequency. The system has been in use for some time in many European countries. The labelling's purpose is to give consumers a quick overview of a product's nutritional value without having to decipher the numbers on the packaging themselves.

How the system works

The Nutri-Score scale features letters A to E, where A (green) represents the healthiest choice and E (red) represents a less healthy alternative. The assessment takes into account both positive nutritional properties, such as fibre, protein and vegetable content, as well as negative factors, for example the amount of sugar, salt and saturated fats.

Hellika Kallaste, adviser in the food safety department at the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture, emphasises that the final rating is not determined by a single ingredient, but by the product's overall nutritional profile. This means that low values for one ingredient do not automatically result in a poor final rating if other values are good.

Voluntary, but spreading

Within the European Union, Nutri-Score is currently a voluntary labelling system, meaning companies use it at their own discretion. Products from France, Belgium, Germany and other European countries often carry the labelling from the factory, which explains why it is particularly common in Estonia on imported goods.

Consumer awareness of food labelling has grown in recent years, and the expansion of Nutri-Score to the Estonian market is part of a broader European food policy trend aimed at making healthy eating simpler and more accessible to everyone.