Nutritional Value Score Rates Foods Based on Nutrient Density and Noncommunicable Disease Prevention.

Area of Science:

• Nutritional science
• Public health
• Food policy

Background:

• Existing nutrient profiling systems (NPS) are often designed for high-income countries.
• They fail to account for local food availability, nutrient bioavailability, or the dual burden of malnutrition in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Purpose of the Study:

• Develop and validate the Nutritional Value Score (NVS), a novel NPS.
• The NVS aims to identify foods with high nutritional value relevant to global health priorities.
• It is designed to serve as a functional unit for environmental impact and affordability analyses.

Main Methods:

• The NVS incorporates 7 weighted components: nutrient ratios (sodium:potassium, saturated:unsaturated fat, carbohydrate:fiber), vitamins, minerals, protein quality, n-3 fatty acids, fiber, and calories.
• A 25% penalty is applied to ultraprocessed foods.
• The NVS was applied to 289 foods across five countries (Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, USA) using local food composition data.

Main Results:

• The NVS identified organ meats, dark green leafy vegetables, fish, and seafood as highest scoring.
• Soft drinks, sweets, instant noodles, and refined grains scored lowest.
• The NVS demonstrated stronger discrimination within food groups compared to Nutri-Score and Health Star Rating (HSR), with weaker correlations for ultraprocessed foods.

Conclusions:

• The NVS offers improved differentiation of food nutritional value compared to existing NPS.
• It facilitates more meaningful environmental and affordability comparisons.
• The NVS shows promise for guiding global policies and programs focused on nutritious foods.