Consumer information processing in food-decoding applications: An investigation into aggregation and evaluation of health scores

Context and research goalsFood-decoding mobile applications such as Yuka have gained widespread popularity, offering consumers simplified evaluations of food products based on aggregated health scores. For an application like Yuka, the total score is a weighted sum of sub-scores for additives, nutrients and organic labeling. These sub-scores often take the form of coloured discs (red, yellow, or green), and are based on different calculation logics: for additives, a lexicographical logic is applied (other, non-risky additives do not compensate for a risky additive), while for nutrients, the Nutriscore - and its compensatory logic - is used directly. However, as the authors of the Nutriscore point out: "In terms of public health, it is essential to inform consumers about each of the three health aspects of food: nutritional quality, degree of processing, presence of pesticides. A number of initiatives have recently been launched, proposing to combine at least two, if not all three, of these dimensions in a single indicator. However, the weightings used between each of these dimensions are not yet based on solid scientific foundations, and there is no scientific consensus on the trade-offs made when they are discordant. As a result, it seems impossible to combine them into a single synthetic indicator that would sum up the overall 'health' value of foods." It therefore seems ontologically impossible to define an indisputable aggregate health score. However, such aggregations do exist, either explicitly in these mobile applications, or latently in the minds of consumers when confronted with detailed and, possibly, different kinds of information. It is even reasonable to think that the scores affixed to packaging and the use of nutritional mobile applications influence consumers' representations and the way in which they aggregate information. However, little research has examined how consumers process these aggregated and disaggregated grades and/or scores when making food choices. This research investigates how consumers interpret and use these evaluations, particularly focusing on the aggregation of nutritional and additive information in the perception of product healthfulness.