What is the Food Compass, how does it work, and is it helpful? |

What is the Food Compass and what was it for?

In times when we are surrounded by an excess of food, and shops, restaurants and catering offer more and more new products and dishes, we can sometimes feel frustrated not knowing exactly which food is the best and most nutritious choice for us. Scientists decided to make it easier for consumers to make food decisions and developed a completely new food evaluation system, called – Food Compass.

This tool is designed to help consumers choose the healthiest products, avoid the unfavorable ones, and support food companies and restaurants in producing valuable food for people.

By analyzing the nutrients of a food, using the latest research methods, scientists considered food products in terms of their impact on our health.

Food Compass was developed by the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy of Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA. It took scientists three years to screen a huge number of food products and ready meals for their nutritional properties. On October 14 this year, Dr. Dariush Moffazarian – lead author of the study – published the results in the online scientific journal Nature Food.

Details of the Food Compass

Food Compass contains a database of over 8 food, dishes and drinks consumed by society. Taking into account the various characteristics and properties determining the health impact of a given food, it was possible to create a final score for each tested product. Ratings are given on a scale from 1 – the least healthy, to 100 – the most healthy.

Scientists emphasize that dishes, drinks and food products rated above 70 points should form the basis of our daily diet. Products in the 31-69 point range should be consumed in moderation. Anything less than 30 points should be eaten as little as possible.

• The lowest rated food category was sweet dishes and snacks. The average score in this category was 16,4 points.
• The highest score was given to vegetables – average score – 69,1 and fruit – 73,9 points (almost all raw fruit received a score of 100, dried and processed fruits slightly less).
• Legumes, nuts and seeds were ranked quite high – 78,6 points.
• The rating of sugar-sweetened drinks and energy drinks is – 27,6. Vegetable and fruit juices overall scored high – 67.
• Starchy vegetables – the average of the points is – 43,2.
• Beef was rated very low – 24,9 points compared to poultry – 42,67 and seafood – 67. Most of the fish received the highest rating – 100 points.

Should I trust the scores of the Food Compass unconditionally?

Scientists went above and beyond to study such a huge amount of food and drink. They proudly presented their new guidelines to the world. Looking at the scores of some foods on the Food Compass list, I come to the conclusion that they must have mixed up something and got confused 😉

From the list above, you can see that canned watermelon and peaches are more nutritious than eggs in butter. Really? There is also a problem with eggs that Food Compass values ​​egg substitutes more than natural products. I also noticed that dishes treated with margarine are higher in the hierarchy of values ​​than those with butter. I thought the battle on the butter-margarine front had already been cleared up, and that scientists and doctors knew saturated fats weren’t our enemy, but I guess I was wrong. In your opinion, which is healthier: butter or margarine?

As you can see on the list of the new Food Compass, Cherrios breakfast cereals – highly processed product received a score of 95. Ground beef is pale with its 26 points. Which food is more nutritious, do you think? Who paid for this ‘cutting-edge research’ when products such as chocolate-covered almonds, peanut butter, sweet potato chips, and even French fries scored more than eggs and beef steak? Are people really in such a low level of consciousness now that they’ll take their word for it?

Other examples of food scoring on the Food Compass:

• Avocados – 100
• Celery juice – 100
• Peanut butter (from peanuts) without sugar – 85
• Quinoa — 81
• Fruit smoothie – 74
• Cappuccino with non-fat milk – 73
• Chicken liver – 73
• Wholemeal bread – 64
• Fried chicken breast with skin – 55
• French fries – 55
• Beef steak – 33
• Apple pie – 19
• Chorizo — 11
• White flour bread – 8
• White rice – 1
• Marshmallow – 1

If you are curious about the scoring of your favorite snacks and foods, you can look here. On this page you will find a comprehensive list of the food products tested and the points assigned to them on a scale of 1 – 100.

How to eat to be healthy?

My grandmother would tapping her forehead seeing these scientific arguments 😉 She didn’t need any research to feed her family. Most of the food came from her farm and we were therefore somewhat self-sufficient in our food source. What did we eat? The table was dominated by butter from cows grazing on the grass, fatty cream and fatty cottage cheese – yummy!We ate pork and lard – none of us was afraid of saturated fat. Chickens ran around the yard, and the village eggs tasted great. The record-holder in their consumption is my uncle, who is over seventy and has been consuming 50 scrambled eggs for breakfast for 5 years. Ask him if he is afraid of cholesterol.

Today, science sometimes tries to outsmart nature and evolution. Foods that man ate hundreds of thousands of years ago are now described by some scientists as harmful to health. There is real chaos among scientists when it comes to the influence of food on our body. How to find a golden mean in all of this? Whom to believe and who not? Contemporary man is increasingly distancing himself from the knowledge of what serves him and what poisons him. Part of the fault is the food industry, which offers us processed products, sometimes telling us that they are beneficial to health because they have been enriched with synthetic vitamins.

Let us not be fooled by science, let us believe our instincts and our body. If your daily diet is not nourishing you in some way or meeting all your body’s needs, if you feel tired and lacking in energy, it may be time to take a look at your menu and think about what is healthy and what is good for you. and what’s the opposite. Without the guidance of science, can you distinguish between foods from these two opposite poles: healthy versus unhealthy? Do you need a Food Compass to know what’s good and what’s not? Do you know how to eat to be healthy?