Summary
- What is Yuka?
- Use Yuka to recognize food products that are good or less good for you
- Evaluate the quality of food products with Yuka
- How does Yuka work?
- Close-up on Yuka's most interesting features
- What are the limits of the Yuka app?
- Comments
Like most people, you've probably frowned upon reading the ingredient list displayed on a food package. At this point, you wondered about these weird names like flavor enhancers, E451 or other texture agents. This is where the Yuka application comes in. It is a great ally for analyzing the ingredients present in food products in order to identify the healthiest ones.
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Download Yuka - Product Scan for Android
Rating: ★★★★★★ (74346 votes) | Health and fitnessVersion 4.9 | Yuka App Developer | Updated on 21/12/2021
Configuration: 5.0 or later Download Yuka - Product Scan Directly Download APKWhat is Yuka?
Yuka is a food data analysis tool that provides information on the composition of a product. Available on Android and iOS, it is part of the “fitness and health” applications. The platform is currently enjoying constant success. This mobile application has been available in our country since 2021. The French now count more than 5 million walking the supermarket shelves to scan the different food products on the shelves with the Yuka application.
This tool created by Julie Chapon and two friends, Benoit Martin and her brother our city Martin, allows you to scan the barcode of foodstuffs in order to know if they are good or bad for your health. It classifies the ingredients that make up the product according to a quality score on a scale of 0 to 100 and a badge of different colors: red to indicate poor quality, orange for poor quality and green for good quality.
The application lists more than 250 food items and manages to recognize 000% of requests. The tool is also highly regarded for its convenience, as it can respond to an average of around 98 scans per second. Its main objective is to overcome the pitfalls of ultra-processed products in order to help consumers change their habits and try to eat healthier. The service therefore allows you to become aware of what you are putting on your plate.
Use Yuka to recognize food products that are good or less good for you
In the past, we had the chance to consume artisanal products. This is no longer the case today. Indeed, for several decades, the shelves of our stores have been invaded by more or less processed food products. Manufacturers have gradually made changes in the recipes in order to facilitate the industrial production of their products, to extend their shelf life or simply to make them more addictive and more appetizing.
To increase the flavors, they added more and more salt. To activate the pleasure circuit in your brain, they increased the level of sugar and fat. Manufacturers have also added synthetic additives such as E460 or E256, some of these names which are not very reassuring and which are often found on most food packaging. Many food additives are currently suspected of being dangerous for health. In our country, more than 600 food additives are authorized while only 50 of them are allowed in organic products.
In addition, excessive consumption of sugar, fat and salt is causing a global epidemic of chronic disease and obesity. According to the results of a French study, it has been shown that a 10% overconsumption of highly processed products, containing a lot of sugars, fats and added salts, can increase the risk of cancer to 10%. With an application like Yuka, you will now be able to adopt a good diet by putting the best products on your plate and eliminating the less healthy.
Evaluate the quality of food products with Yuka
Today, more and more people are concerned about their health and that of their loved one. They pay more attention to what they eat, knowing that good nutrition is the first medicine. Yuka was designed with the primary objective of helping consumers recognize healthier products.
On the packaging, you will obviously find the information you need to make the right choices. However, it is not at all easy to navigate due to the fact that most additives are defined by strange names or number codes. In addition, some nutritional information is difficult to understand. It is even possible that the information shown on the packaging is often misleading that you could easily get confused.
A brand can indicate on the packaging of its food product a "30% less sugars" when in reality, the food is composed of a sweetener whose effects are just as, or even more, dangerous for health. You can easily get lost with deceptive marketing and hard-to-read labels. Thus, you will no longer know which saint to turn to, hence the interest of using the Yuka application.
How does Yuka work?
To calculate the score and rate the healthiest products, the Yuka analysis tool is based on 3 distinct criteria, including the nutritional qualities of the product, the presence of food additives and organic farming certification.
- The nutritional qualities of the product
This criterion consists in evaluating the nutritional composition of the scanned product. The principle is to classify the quality of food from the worst to the best for health. While good foods add points to the score, bad foods subtract points. Among the nutrients to promote are proteins, fibers, fruits and vegetables. On the other hand, sugars, energy, salt and saturated fatty acids are some of the nutrients to avoid.
- The presence of food additives
With this criterion, consumers will be able to avoid foods containing additives that are harmful to health. Yuka's rating is based in particular on different sources in order to classify food additives according to their degree of harmfulness in 4 categories: harmful (red disc), to be avoided (orange disc), doubtful (yellow disc) and without impact (red disc) green).
- Organic farming certification
This criterion relates to the method of production of the product, in this case whether it is an organic product or not. This last point is to give an advantage to food from organic agriculture over those from conventional agriculture. A product holding the AB or Eurofeuille label (organic labeling from the European Union) will benefit from 10 more points.
Close-up on Yuka's most interesting features
The platform offers several features, but among the most interesting, we can mention a few, namely the Yuka score, the comparison of food products between them and the proposal of alternatives.
- The Yuka score
This functionality takes into account several aspects that relate to health. It allows you to analyze the nutritional composition of a product while also evaluating the level of transformation of this one as well as the manufacturing process of raw materials thanks to the dimension "food additives." Generally speaking, we can say that the Yuka score is the best information we currently have, despite the fact that it is not perfect.
- Compare products easily
With Yuka, you can place all the products on a ladder. This will make it easier for you to compare them with each other. If with other applications, the comparison of products cannot be done within the same category, with Yuka, it is quite possible. Thus, you will find that the rating of a packet of corn chips is higher than that of a traditional packet of potatoes which has an even higher rating than a packet of flavored potato chips. cheese.
- Suggestion of alternatives
The app suggests healthier alternatives for a similar commodity. If you can't resist the spread when you realize that Nutella is particularly high in sugar and fat, all you have to do is scan your Nutella jar. Yuka will then offer you a selection of competing spreads made from a different recipe, whose nutrient mix is much more beneficial for health.
What are the limits of the Yuka app?
The only downside with this tool is that it does not take prices into account. Thus, it offers alternatives that are much more expensive than basic food products. Obviously, a high price is often a guarantee of a quality product, but this is not always within everyone's means.
Then, it should be noted that it is somewhat tedious to use the scan at home or in store. The first time users access the app, they'll be thrilled to hear the score for the foods they are used to eating. After a while, they will tire of wandering the aisles of stores with their smartphones in hand. As soon as the shopping list contains precisely the products to favor, they will no longer have any interest in using the application.
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