French app Yuka brings people power to the supermarket aisle 

In France, “Big Ham” has taken aim at a plucky start-up called Yuka that operates a popular smartphone app, which aims to empower health-conscious consumers. 

Installed by 24m users, the Yuka app allows them to scan the barcode on packaged foods to see a score out of 100 that reflects the product’s nutritional value as well as its impact on the environment from carbon emissions to packaging. Since it was founded by Julie Chapon along with brothers Benoit and Francois Martin in 2017, Yuka has expanded to 12 countries, including the UK and the US. 

Yet the transparency the app brings has not been welcomed by FICT, a trade group representing 300 French charcuterie manufacturers. It has filed a lawsuit against Yuka alleging that it has “disparaged” its members’ products by assigning them low scores if they contain nitrates, a preservative that helps protect shelf life and colour. In 2015, the World Health Organization said nitrates in processed meats were probable carcinogens for humans. 

That the industry has brought out the heavy artillery against Yuka is a sign of how threatening this type of technology-enabled tool can be to corporations today. By making complex issues such as nutrition or pollution much simpler, they allow people to put their money where their mouths are. 

Yuka and similar apps, such as Fooducate in the US or ToxFox in Germany, have stepped into a gap left by regulators who have the power to require product labelling. While mandatory nutritional labelling of calories, proteins, sugar and fats has been in place for decades in many countries, the area of environmental labelling is much less developed. There are some nascent schemes but they largely remain voluntary.

In an era when consumers, especially young ones, really care about climate change and sustainability, apps such as Yuka give them a way to signal to companies the types of ingredients or environmental practices that they will no longer accept. That creates a powerful feedback loop that can sometimes spark change more quickly than regulation, especially when powerful lobbying interests limit government action.

Take French supermarket chain Intermarché. It declared that it would reformulate 900 recipes for food products sold under its in-house brands to improve their Yuka scores either by removing 142 additives or by cutting sugar and salt.

Food companies have long reformulated products in response to government labelling requirements — just look at how manufacturers of packaged cookies and breads reduced trans fats in the US in the early 2000s. But the exposure provided by Yuka and others is different because it cannot be slowed or influenced by lobbying.

When Yuka started grading beauty products, Mathilde Thomas, the founder of clean beauty brand Caudalie, was spurred into action. She sped up a plan to remove silicones and PEGs, or petroleum-based compounds, from Caudalie’s moisturisers and cleansers. “Yuka has actually been good for us since it has brought us new customers by highlighting how we differ from traditional cosmetics brands,” Thomas said, although she admitted having disagreements with Yuka on the risks posed by certain ingredients. 

French ham makers are clearly taking a different tack with Yuka — that of open warfare. They recently won a first court case in Paris after a judge ordered Yuka to remove any mention of the health risks posed by nitrates from the app and imposed a fine of €20,000. 

“They are trying to shut us up but we are not afraid,” said Chapon. Yuka plans to appeal but Chapon admits the lawsuits could bankrupt the start-up if judges side with the FICT’s requests for millions in damages. 

Chapon suspects that the charcuterie brands are not only annoyed about the nitrates issue but also about Yuka’s newest feature known as the Eco-Score that recently launched in France. The product of two years of work in conjunction with French government scientists and 10 partner organisations, the Eco-Score assigns a grade to foods from the letter A to E based on their environmental impact.

Meat products by definition could not get the highest green rating, said Chapon, because of the greenhouse gas emissions generated by livestock. 

Even if Chapon can defend Yuka this time, the backlash from industry is a reminder of how consumer pressure can only go so far. For real change to occur in the battle against obesity and climate change, there is nothing like a big stick wielded by effective regulators. 

leila.abboud@ft.com