The SENS algorithm—a new nutrient profiling system for food labelling in Europe

Abstract

Background/objectivesIn response to the European regulation on nutrition and health claims, France proposed in 2008 the SAIN,LIM profiling system that classifies foods into four classes based on a nutrient density score called ‘SAIN’, a score of nutrients to limit called ‘LIM’, and one primary threshold on each score. We present here the SENS algorithm, a new nutrient profiling system adapted from the SAIN,LIM to be operational for simplified nutrition labelling in line with the European regulation on food information to consumers.Subjects/methodsThe main changes made to SAIN,LIM to get SENS were to introduce food categories and sub-categories (‘Beverages’, ‘Added Fats’ and ‘Other Solid Foods’ sub-categorised into ‘cereals’, ‘cheese’, ‘other dairy products’, ‘eggs’, ‘fish’ and ‘others’), reduce the number of nutrients, introduce category-specific nutrients and category-specific weighting for some nutrients, replace French recommendations with European reference intakes, and add secondary thresholds. Each food and non-alcoholic beverage from the 2013-CIQUAL French composition database (n = 1065) was assigned one SENS class. Distribution of foods according to the four SENS classes was described by food groups (n = 26).ResultsThe SENS classification was consistent with the recommendations to consume large amounts of whole grains, vegetables and fruits, and moderate intake of fats, sugars, meats, caloric beverages and salt. For most groups (19/26), foods were distributed across at least three SENS classes.ConclusionsThe SENS is a nutrition-sensitive system that discriminates foods between and within food categories. It preserves the strengths of the initial SAIN,LIM while making it operational for simplified nutrition labelling in Europe.

Proceedings of a roundtable event ‘Is communicating the concept of nutrient density important?’

“…The SAIN,LIM has subsequently been adapted to a hybrid system incorporating food groups (the SENS algorithm) to make it more operational for nutrition labelling in Europe (Darmon et al ), although it is not currently being used for that purpose.…”

A proposed nutrient density score that includes food groups and nutrients to better align with dietary guidance

“…By contrast, NP models are very precise about amounts of nutrients per calorie, nutrients per gram, or nutrients per standard serving. Many NP models have transparent algorithms that are open for inspection and review 15–17 , 19 . A better alignment between the DGA concepts and the NP literature would be beneficial for both.…”

“…A number of other NP models for foods have been described in the literature, in addition to the NRF 15–17 , 19 , 20 , 23–25 . Only a few are hybrid scores combining nutrients and food groups.…”

Policies for encouraging healthier food choices

“…In many countries, low-income groups are making the unhealthiest food choices. Researchers are trying to establish whether this is due to a lack of easy access to nutritious food, a contrasting ease of access to processed convenience food, lack of information concerning dietary recommendations, health literacy and the higher cost of healthy food and lower energy density per USD spent (Tiehen, Newman and Kirlin, 2017 [29]) (Darmon and Drewnowski, 2015 [30]).…”