The Shocking Things I Learned Using the Yuka Food Scoring App

Want to know exactly how healthy your dinner is? Even if it isn’t, Yuka has you covered. It’s an app that scans the barcodes of almost every item in our cupboards to give it a health score out of 100. With its handy traffic light rankings and suggestions for healthier alternatives, it’s likely that, like me and the rest of my east London mums WhatsApp group, you’ll quickly become addicted.

It can get out of hand. My app usage hit its lowest point almost immediately, when, at 1 a.m., I decided to scan the contents of my bathroom cabinet. The chemical-laden results were enough to keep me up all night trying to figure out what was going on in my kids’ bathtime routine.

My main takeaway from my shopping is that oat milk, as a processed product, is not as virtuous as you might think. When you factor in canola oil, which is also found in most butters and spreads, it put me off tea and toast for life.

Naturally, unprocessed foods are the most popular, with Weetabix and organic wholemeal pasta being the highest rated. But, as someone who is gluten intolerant, I realised that for all these years I had spent years worrying about calories, fat and protein content, but had overlooked the absolute lack of nutrients in ‘free’ foods.

But how reliable is this app? TikTok sleuths have raised eyebrows because of the app’s rating methodology, based on Yuka’s “review”, which isn’t always foolproof. Created by a French trio, it’s apparently all the rage across the Channel.

I had a good laugh: On Saturday afternoon, I scanned the barcode on a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. “Yuka doesn’t rate alcohol, but you already know what you’re doing,” the app told me, ending with a winking emoji. I already know what I’m doing. And what I’m doing is feeding my kids only whole foods from now on, and going back to cow’s milk as soon as possible.