10.07.2026

Labelitis – Orientation or Confusion?

Dear readers

We want to know more and more: How many calories are in that cup of Greek yogurt? How much protein is packed into that pot of cottage cheese? And where do the vine tomatoes on display come from? Consciously or unconsciously, such information guides our shopping behavior—turning a stroll through the aisles and past the freezers into an informational marathon.

Of course, not everyone shops according to the principle of "deliberation at the refrigerated shelf." Often it is an impulse buy, and often the budget is the deciding factor. Yet, a trend is unmistakable: information on packaging is taking up more and more space, and it seems this trajectory is set to continue.

In principle, this is positive. Consumers should be able to make informed choices; information enables freedom of choice. However, not all information is clear enough to achieve the purpose for which it was printed. A current case in point is the so-called Nutri-Score. The color-coded scale from A to E is intended to rank foods according to their nutritional value. A red “E” on the packaging: bad food. A green “A” on the packaging: healthy food. Simple enough. Or maybe not?

Whether a product carries the prestigious "A" or the critical "E" is decided by a mathematical balancing act: fruit, vegetables, proteins, and fiber are weighed against salt, sugar, and fat. The formula balances the healthy against the less beneficial and distills from it the letter we ultimately encounter as a score. It is obvious that this calculation itself provokes criticism. However, another circumstance carries more weight: suddenly, a sweet dessert gets a "B," while a supposedly healthy food ends up with a "C."

Yet, it was never the intention of experts to use the Nutri-Score to create a universal ranking across the entire product range or to pass a definitive health judgment on fundamentally different products. The model was developed with a much more modest goal: to provide comparability within similar product groups.

In the meantime, Migros has dropped the score, Coop never introduced it, and Nestlé is also abandoning it in Switzerland. Migros justified this step partly by stating that the label repeatedly caused questions and uncertainty among customers.

Health rankings are one thing, environmental assessments are another. Here, Coop relies on the Eco-Score, while Migros uses the M-Check. These labels assess the environmental impact of a product based on various criteria. However, both models fail to consider that certain cultivation methods (such as so-called organic farming or the renunciation of efficient plant protection) yield less per hectare; furthermore, the products have a shorter shelf life, meaning more land is required for the same amount of food. In practice, products are often still compared "per hectare" instead of "per ton of yield." But only with a consistent scaling to global food security (yield per unit area) do the systemic costs of higher land requirements become visible. Modern "True Cost of Food" analyses (TCA models) attempt to price in these so-called indirect land-use changes (iLUC). If additional natural areas (e.g., primeval forests) have to be converted into agricultural land to compensate for yield deficits, this leads to extremely high "hidden costs" in the calculation due to CO2 release and the loss of biodiversity. A country as dependent on food imports as Switzerland would have to take productivity and resource efficiency into account. "If there were a problem at the borders for two consecutive days, we would have nothing to eat—because we import so much," as recently expressed by the President of the Swiss Confederation Guy Parmelin at a press conference with an eye on the Swiss self-sufficiency rate of around 46 percent. Agriculture and food systems are simply more complex and comprehensive than certain scores would have us believe.

Sincere food labeling can also lead to food not being bought at all. For example, if organic food were printed with: "This product was sprayed with heavy metal synthesized in the lab" — it would destroy the core of the "natural" brand message.

Food with too much PFAS—the much-discussed "forever chemicals" – may be mixed with clean products until the concentration falls below the legal limit. The packaging will then bear the phrase: "made from a mixture to ensure compliance with maximum PFAS levels." The director of the Swiss Farmers' Union, Martin Rufer, notes laconically: "You might as well write: Caution, poison!" What is the customer supposed to do with that? The note does not explain a risk, it confesses a process – and sows doubt precisely where the product actually meets the requirements.

A label surrounding so-called new breeding technologies would also be of little use. The topic is currently coming up again: due to the EU deregulation of new breeding methods, critics fear that genetically modified plants will soon reach our shelves unlabeled.

So just declare "originating from new genomic breeding methods" or something similar, as is now being demanded by Swissaid, for example? As obvious as that sounds, it fails on two counts:

First, consistency. Even today, the line between "genetic engineering" and "not" is arbitrary. Since the 1950s, plants have been modified by randomly altering their genome using radiation or chemicals. The European Court of Justice explicitly classified such plants as genetically modified in 2018. Nevertheless, they are sold unlabeled, in Europe and Switzerland, including under the organic label. We have therefore long accepted the cruder, older method without an explanatory label—and yet we want to label the new, more precise one.

Second, verification. A label is only as valuable as it is verifiable. Many plants from the new processes cannot be distinguished from conventionally bred ones at all. A labeling requirement whose compliance no one can verify ultimately reassures no one.

The pattern is always the same: we confuse the quantity of information with its value. Plastering a notice on everything helps no one – where every label warns, in the end, none does. If you want consumers to make informed decisions, we shouldn’t just provide more information – we should provide information that is scientifically sound and meaningful. And where an indication merely confuses, a realistic maximum limit is more effective than a warning.

Your swiss-food editorial team