Does this product suit me?

What the number means

A store product with nutrition data carries a number from 0 to 100 with a small meter. It is a nutrition fit score, not a verdict on whether a food is good or bad, and it is read per 100 g or 100 ml, as the pack declares it, so two packs of different sizes can be compared. A product with no nutrition data gets no number: it shows ⓘ instead, because a zero would read as bad when the truth is that nobody knows.

The same number turns up wherever the product does: beside every offer when you pick a product in the store, on the product card you get from scanning a barcode, and on list rows that are tied to a specific pack. It is one calculation, not three.

What it is made of

Tap the number and Mealuna explains the parts it is built from, each in plain words rather than a formula. On a shopping list row the same explanation is one long press away, under Product info.

• Protein as a share of the product's energy.
• Sugar.
• Other carbohydrates.
• Fibre.

More protein per calorie

The protein part asks how much protein you get for the calories. It reaches full marks when protein brings half of the energy, about 12.5 g of protein per 100 kcal. That is what separates two versions of the same food: a light mozzarella scores clearly higher than a regular one, and lean mince higher than fattier mince.

Fat is not a part of its own. It counts through the calories it adds, so oily fish or olive oil is not marked down just for being fat.

When the store does not publish everything

Stores do not always publish every value - fibre is the common gap. Where a value is missing, Mealuna fills it in from Open Food Facts, an open food database, and says on the product page that the number came from there rather than from the store.

That lookup is by product barcode. Nothing about you is attached to it. A value that is still missing is left out of the score rather than counted as zero, so a product is not marked down for what its label does not say.

Calories and protein on every offer

When you pick a product in the store, an offer with nutrition data also shows its calories and protein on the row, for example 161 kcal · 20 g protein. They are per 100 g or 100 ml, as on the pack, and they are the two numbers the protein part is built from, so you can compare variants without opening each one.

Ordering the other offers

Above Other offers you can choose how they are ordered. The choice is remembered on your phone. Your own Suits me set keeps the order you gave it.

• Unit price, the default: the lowest unit price first. Offers close to the cheapest, within the same price margin Mealuna uses when it picks for your basket, are ordered by score, so a clearly dearer product is never moved up for its score.
• Price: the pack price, cheapest first.
• Score: highest first. With equal scores, more protein per calorie goes first, and offers without a score go last.

A better pack on the shelf

When you scan a product where a partner store operates and an alternative of the same kind scores at least 5 points higher, the product card says Better on the shelf, with its name and score next to yours. If the difference is large, it also says why, for example 2.4× more protein or 3.1× less sugar.

It only compares like with like. A strawberry yogurt is never told to become cottage cheese, even though cottage cheese scores higher, because that would be a different food, not a better pack.