Thread by @fleroy1974

If you think #Nutriscore is bad, prepare for worse.

They've now decided that the scores are too benign for red #meat 🥩 - therefore, the algorithms will be tweaked so that this inconvenience is out of the way.

This is not science. This is a crusade.
THREAD 🧵👇

There are many issues with #Nutriscore. Here are some examples that illustrate its often nonsensical outcomes (note that the designers already tweaked the score of olive oil from D to C to accommodate criticism from Mediterranean countries)

But given that the entire thing seems designed to give the prevailing dogma a boost, based on the magic of #nutritionism (calories! fibre! saturated fat!), some remained rather unhappy with the fact that red meat is often scoring A/B. Imagine, suggesting that meat's good for you!

Here's their problem:
"This is due to the favourable points allocated in the protein element of the algorithm, while lean plain meat will have relatively little unfavourable points on energy density, saturated fat or salt".

Or: the algorithm fails to capture something negative

But this is how they'll fix it: "considering that the algorithm for meat *necessitates* (!!) a modification" & that there's a "hypothesis" out there linking heme iron to disease, let's undermine red meat's score based on its heme content.

Or: red meat normally scores high because it's a great protein source, but now heme will act as the #DeusExMachina that saves the situation (through "a reduction in the number of maximal protein points to 2 points")

Why so much focus on heme? It is about the only thing they could use to differentiate red meat from other foods within their reductionist framework.

Never mind that, despite all the mechanistic speculation, a risk assessment fails to find an issue: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

More background here: aleph-2020.blogspot.com/2019/05/plausi…

And never mind that - if anything - heme iron is usually a nutritional asset of meat rather than a problematic compound... aleph-2020.blogspot.com/2019/05/animal…

In other words, they're now telling us to further reduce heme iron intake, the most bioavailable form of iron, in a context of increasing iron deficiency?

With 40-50% of Australian and UK teenage girls, resp., having too low iron intake? And 8-15% of toddlers (2-3y) in Australia? Partially because of confusion among young parents regarding meat...
abc.net.au/news/2021-08-1…

Regardless of heme iron, what's the evidence linking red meat to disease to begin with? Well... It's (very) weak. As shown by this in-depth analysis using the state-of-the-art GRADE methodology:
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31569235/

Nonetheless, some scientists are using all sorts of tricks to modify the picture - anything goes, as long as it makes red meat look bad. We've exposed some of that in this letter to The Lancet regarding the GBD study. Very strange things are going on!
thelancet.com/journals/lance…

If you want to read Nutriscore's algorithm update report, you can find it here:
health.belgium.be/sites/default/…

PS: