When Nestlé announced last week that it would begin phasing out the Nutri-Score label from products sold in Switzerland, the move barely registered outside policy circles. Yet this quiet decision marks a broader shift underway across Europe: the continent is retreating from a food labelling system that was once promoted by its creators as the supposed ‘gold standard’. But as is well known, all that glitters isn’t gold.
Indeed, Nutri-Score has over many years been shedding its golden shine. A traffic-light grading scheme that ranks food products from A (green) to E (red), it was promoted as a tool to help consumers make healthier choices at a glance. But in practice, the system has done more to confuse than to clarify. And countries are backing away. Companies are rethinking. And consumers—whose trust and understanding were supposed to anchor the model—have remained ambivalent at best.
Nestlé’s withdrawal is significant not just because of the brand’s size, but because of its timing and location. The company will stop using Nutri-Score on Switzerland-exclusive products beginning in mid-2025, with a full phase-out planned by the end of 2026. That decision follows a noticeable drop in both political and commercial support for Nutri-Score in the country, leading a Nestlé spokesperson to grumble that the firm’s brands are the “only ones” to carry the label.
Crumbling front
Importantly, Nestlé’s move, after Danone did the same earlier, also reflects a broader truth: Nutri-Score no longer commands consensus in Europe, and the silent unraveling of its legitimacy is well underway. Originally developed in France and introduced on a voluntary basis in Belgium, Germany, and Spain, Nutri-Score as the hailed answer to front-of-package labels failed to materialise.
Italy has been vocal in its opposition, calling Nutri-Score discriminatory against traditional food products like olive oil and Parmigiano Reggiano. Eastern European countries have raised concerns about the data reliability underpinning Nutri-Score’s algorithm. Meanwhile, Switzerland, never a full convert, has seen growing resistance from retailers and political actors who view the system as both reductive and incompatible with national food culture.
It’s telling that Nestlé’s exit applies only to Swiss-market brands. This is not a blanket rejection, but a clear calculation: Nutri-Score no longer adds value in Switzerland. And where it no longer adds value, it no longer makes commercial sense.
The consumer doesn’t buy it
At the heart of the problem is a contradiction that Nutri-Score never resolved: its attempt to simplify nutritional science into a single, colour-coded grade strips away too much context. Products that are naturally calorie-dense, like nuts, olive oil, or certain cheeses, are penalised, even when consumed in moderation as part of a balanced diet.
The effect is that the label doesn’t always align with common sense, or with what people already know about food. The system’s opacity about how scores are calculated hasn’t helped. Informed consumers remain sceptical. Less informed consumers don’t trust what they can’t understand. And no amount of colour-coding can fix a credibility problem once it’s set in.
Surveys in several countries have shown that consumer recognition of Nutri-Score does not translate into behavioural change. The labels are noticed, but not necessarily trusted, nor acted upon. Where uptake was expected to be intuitive and widespread, it has instead been tepid and uneven.
One-size-fits-none model
One of Nutri-Score’s most persistent flaws is its rigidity. It doesn’t account for local diets, cultural patterns, or how foods are consumed in context. This may be tolerable in theory, but becomes problematic when regulatory pressure pushes for adoption across markets with very different culinary foundations.
A rating system that penalises olive oil but gives a green light to fibre-enriched, artificially sweetened snacks is unlikely to gain traction in Mediterranean countries. Nor should it. Food is not a pharmaceutical input. It carries cultural, economic, and social meaning. To impose a pan-European labelling model that overlooks this complexity is not public health policy, it’s nutritional central planning.
This was never about avoiding regulation. Clear, evidence-based nutritional guidance is important. But guidance that alienates the public or stigmatises traditional diets is not helpful. And a system that claims scientific grounding but cannot tolerate contextual nuance quickly loses both authority and utility.
Nestlé has made it clear that it will continue to provide full nutritional information on packaging in Switzerland, even without Nutri-Score. That is an important point. The retreat from Nutri-Score does not signal a retreat from transparency. On the contrary, it reflects a growing consensus that effective consumer information must be both detailed and intelligible, just not reduced to a single-letter rating.
It’s time to rethink what food labelling is for. If the goal is public health, then simplicity must not come at the cost of accuracy. If the goal is trust, then systems must respect local identities and dietary norms. And if the goal is to empower consumers, then we must recognise that information alone isn’t power but clarity is.
Nestlé’s decision may look cautious on the surface. But in a policy field where inertia is often the norm, choosing to let go of a failed model is an act of leadership. Europe should take note.
