App Profile: EWG's Food Scores

How does your food score? How do we know what we’re eating, really? Food processors make so many claims these days. Supermarkets are loaded with foods that contain chemicals no one can pronounce.

EWG’s Food Scores houses information on tens of thousands of foods in a simple, searchable online format designed to guide consumers to healthy, affordable food that’s good for people and the planet.

The database includes more than:
• 80,000 products
• 5,000 ingredients
• 1,500 brands

How did we come up with our scores? We combine these ratings into a single overall product score.

-- Nutrition. The nutrition scoring algorithm considers multiple factors, including calories, saturated fat, trans fat, sugar, sodium, protein, fiber and fruit, vegetable and nut content.

-- Ingredient concerns. The ingredient concerns algorithm focuses on factors such as the likely presence of key contaminants, pesticides, hormones and antibiotics and the health implications of certain food additives.

-- Processing. The processing score reflects EWG's best estimate of the extent to which a particular food has been processed. Scoring factors include modification of individual ingredients from whole foods and the number of artificial ingredients.