How is a food health score calculated?
Short answer
Olive Detective's 0–100 score is deterministic: nutrition quality per 100g carries the most weight, then additive load, then NOVA processing level, with a small organic bonus. Whole natural foods are not penalised for the salt or fat they inherently contain. The same product always returns the same score, and every deduction is shown with its reason.
The four inputs
- Nutrition quality — sugar, salt, saturated fat, fibre and protein per 100g, against UK FSA-style thresholds
- Additives — controversial E-numbers, weighted by how strongly each is contested
- Processing — the NOVA group, with ultra-processed products (NOVA 4) taking the largest deduction
- Organic — a small bonus, never enough to rescue an ultra-processed product
Why 'natural-first' matters
A pure nutrition score punishes olives for salt, cheese for saturated fat and nuts for calorie density, while a diet soda scores well because it contains almost nothing. That is the standard failure of front-of-pack scoring, and it is why a scoring engine has to distinguish salt that is inherent to a whole food from salt engineered into a snack.
Olive Detective's engine caps the penalty a whole, minimally processed food can take for its inherent salt or fat, and pushes the deduction onto processing and additives instead. Whole food ranks above engineered food even when the raw macros say otherwise.
Deterministic, not AI-generated
The score is computed on the device by a fixed rules engine. It does not call a language model and does not vary between runs — the same barcode returns the same number today and next month, unless the underlying product data changes. AI is used only for the optional plain-language explanation and the follow-up chat, never for the number itself.
The personalised 'For You' score
Separately from the objective score, the app computes a second number weighted toward what you told it you avoid — seed oils, added sugar, additives, specific allergens. Two people scanning the same product can get different 'For You' scores, which is the point: a peanut allergy makes a well-formulated peanut bar the wrong product for you regardless of its nutrition.
Frequently asked questions
- Is the score the same as Nutri-Score?
- No. Nutri-Score is an official European front-of-pack grade based on nutrients per 100g only. Olive Detective's score uses nutrition as its largest input but adds additives, processing level and organic status, and deliberately avoids penalising whole foods for inherent salt or fat.
- Why did a product's score change?
- The scoring engine is fixed, so a changed score means changed inputs — usually that the product's data in Open Food Facts was corrected or completed, or that you changed your personal preferences, which only affects the 'For You' score.
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Last updated 26 August 2026.
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