What is the nutritional quality of the food we buy in Europe’s supermarkets?

The nutrient content displayed on labels of packaged food shows large differences across and within European countries and food categories, a new analytical JRC overview shows. Efforts by the industry to improve the nutrient composition of foods are ongoing. However, sometimes improvement in one nutrient – like sugars, salt, fat or fibre – is offset by a worsening of another.

The link between food and health

What we eat has a major impact on our health. More than 88% of deaths and more than 84% of the total years of healthy life lost in the EU in 2023 were the result of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

Unhealthy diets, high in salt, sugar and fats, and low in dietary fibre, increase the risk of non-communicable diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.

One of the most cost-effective ways to address unhealthy diets is through food reformulation. This means the food industry makes products with healthier profiles by reducing nutrients such as salt, sugars, and saturated fats, while increasing dietary fibre. To establish whether reformulation is taking place, at what pace, and where focus is needed, it is important to know the nutrient content of packaged foods and their changes over time.

Until now, there hasn’t been a systematic, freely accessible overview of the nutrients’ composition of packaged foods. To help fill this gap, the JRC developed the Food and Beverages Label Explorer (FABLE), an online tool providing access to product-level information collected from food labels.

FABLE hosts and helps visualise key data (e.g. nutrient composition and trends, ingredients) collected from labels of packaged foods and beverages. It makes data on branded food and beverages, collected through EU-funded projects, available for researchers, policy makers and the public, in an easy to read and understand format.

With this FABLE data at their hands, JRC scientists analysed more than 180 000 products from 21 European countries, focusing on five key food categories: breakfast cereals; bread products; fresh dairy products and desserts; delicatessen meats and similar products; and soft drinks.

Key findings

There is substantial variation in nutrient content, both between and within countries, and between products of the same category. For example, the total sugars content (per 100 g) of breakfast cereals ranged from 1g to 28 g. Among delicatessen meats and similar products, saturated fat content (per 100 g) ranged from less than 1g to 14 g.

Total sugars decreased substantially across most countries for breakfast cereals, compared to the previous data collection points. At the same time however, researchers observed increase in total and saturated fats in the same food category.

To interpret these findings, the average nutrient content for different types of products was compared with the daily intake recommendations for a healthy diet from the World Health Organization and the European Food Safety Authority. Using these benchmarks, together with food consumption data, they observed that consuming one or few packaged products from certain food categories would contribute heavily towards surpassing daily intake recommendations for nutrients of concern.

For example, many delicatessen meats and similar products are so high in total fat and salt that consuming them could lead to exceeding daily intake recommendations; eating a ham sandwich (containing 2-3 slices of ham) and a green salad with 2 slices of bacon in a day, would already reach 40% of the maximum daily salt intake just from the deli meat in these two meals. Additional salt could come from the bread and the salad sauce.

Similarly, an estimation of the free sugars content in the data set reveals that just one can of cola (330ml) and 40g of high-fibre fruit cereals already surpass more than twice their maximum daily intake of free sugars.

A need for a more nuanced approach

This work showcases that there is a need for targeted reformulation efforts, focusing on those food sub‑categories where potential impact is greatest. It also highlights the need for a comprehensive, holistic approach to nutrient quality rather than examining single-nutrient strategies in isolation.

Finally, our work demonstrates the added value of FABLE, both as a European-level snapshot tool but also as a targeted, country and product-specific aide for national policy makers in European countries.