How should food and beverage brands prepare their product data for Nutri-Score in several markets?

Food and beverage brands that sell in more than one market should prepare for Nutri-Score by keeping one verified product record that can produce a current score, and the data behind it, for each market on request. The label is voluntary in law, but retailers in France already ask suppliers for scores, shoppers have long expected it, and seven countries take part in its governance with different calculation dates, while the FDA has proposed a different system for the United States. This guide explains where the label stands today, what is pushing for a mandate, what could happen next, how other markets approach front-of-pack labeling, and how to check whether your product data is ready.

In This Guide

• Is Nutri-Score mandatory today, and what are retailers asking for?
• What do consumers expect, and who is pushing for a mandate?
• What could happen next for Nutri-Score in France?
• Which countries use Nutri-Score, and when did each start the updated calculation?
• What are the EU and the US doing about front-of-pack labeling?
• What does a Nutri-Score request demand of your product data?
• How ready is your product data for a Nutri-Score request?
• What questions should you ask your data systems and vendors about Nutri-Score?
• Frequently asked questions

Is Nutri-Score mandatory today, and what are retailers asking for?

No. Nutri-Score display is still voluntary in law in France. In practice, large retailers are not waiting for a law.

Retailers are treating the score as a supplier obligation, not only as shopper information. In November 2024, Carrefour wrote to more than 550 food suppliers. It asked them to make the Nutri-Score visible on pack and gave them three months to refuse, failing which it would calculate and publish the score itself. Brands that opposed the request would be excluded from its healthier-alternatives tool.

In May 2026, Intermarché wrote to all its suppliers, not only those behind its own brands. It announced that Nutri-Score and Yuka scores would be displayed in its digital environments from September, and that the absence of a score, or an express refusal from the supplier, would be flagged to shoppers with a notice.

In both cases the alternative to supplying a score is an outcome the retailer controls: a score calculated by the retailer, or a notice to shoppers that the brand did not respond.

What do consumers expect, and who is pushing for a mandate?

In France, the expectation is not new. In its survey of September 2020, Santé publique France found that 93% of the population had already heard of or seen the Nutri-Score and that 89% favored making it mandatory. Of the people who knew the logo, 57% said they had changed at least one purchasing habit because of it.

That expectation now has a public channel. A petition on the National Assembly's website, opened in November 2025, asks for display of the Nutri-Score on food packaging to be mandatory. It has gathered more than 114,000 signatures, past the 100,000-signature threshold.

Parliament has not followed so far. The Senate voted against the obligation in November 2025. The National Assembly adopted it at first reading that month, then dropped it in December 2025. Since then, two amendments taking up the petition's text have been filed for the social security financing bill: one would make display mandatory on food packaging, the other would require the Nutri-Score in food advertising.

What could happen next for Nutri-Score in France?

In October 2026 the National Assembly rejected amendments to make Nutri-Score display mandatory on food packaging and in food advertising, during debate on the 2027 social security financing bill. Nutri-Score therefore remains voluntary in France. The question could still return through separate legislative proposals, but no mandatory national scheme has been enacted. Under the Assembly's petition rules, a petition that gathers 500,000 signatures from at least 30 French departments or overseas collectivities can be placed on the agenda by the Conférence des présidents and debated in public session.

For companies using Nutri-Score, Santé publique France provides a two-year transition period from 16 March 2025 to apply the updated calculation to packaging. The transition therefore ends in March 2027.

Whichever way the mandate goes, the planning question for a brand is the same: if display became mandatory, how long would it take to produce a verified score for every SKU in the range?

Which countries use Nutri-Score, and when did each start the updated calculation?

Nutri-Score is not only a French label. Santé publique France names Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Luxembourg as countries that have decided to recommend its use. With France, they make up the seven participants in its transnational governance.

The updated calculation did not start on the same day everywhere. The same page lists 1 January 2024 for Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands, 5 March 2024 for Luxembourg and 16 March 2025 for France. It lists no date for Spain.

In France, the change was significant. Santé publique France said that 30 to 40% of products would see their score change, with water becoming the only drink rated A and drinks with sweeteners moving from B to a C to E range.

For a brand selling in several of these countries, the same product can therefore carry different calculation versions depending on the market and the pack. The question for a product team is which SKUs have been rescored, in which markets, and which packs still show the previous version.

What are the EU and the US doing about front-of-pack labeling?

Europe has no single front-of-pack label. In November 2022, Agra reported that the European Commission would not propose Nutri-Score as the harmonised EU label.

The United States is heading toward a different design. The FDA has proposed a front-of-package "Nutrition Info box" for most packaged foods. It would rate saturated fat, sodium and added sugars as low, medium or high, where Nutri-Score gives one letter for the whole product. The rule is still a proposal. A June 2026 legal analysis says it remains under review, with compliance dates contemplated about three years after the effective date for larger companies.

The label designs differ, but both depend on verified nutrition values for each product.

What does a Nutri-Score request demand of your product data?

A score request is a data request. To produce a Nutri-Score for a product, a brand needs the nutrition values of the recipe as sold, plus the other composition data the calculation uses, such as the share of fruit and vegetables and, for some product categories, the presence of sweeteners, tied to the right version of that recipe, and it needs to show where those values came from. Six capabilities sit behind that.

• Collect: gather nutrition and ingredient data from each supplier, in a consistent format.
• Structure: link ingredient data to recipes, so that a change to one ingredient reaches every finished product that uses it.
• Verify: check values against source documents, with a named owner for each check.
• Maintain: when a recipe or supplier change affects the data used in the calculation, recalculate the score and retain the result with the relevant version.
• Trace: keep the origin of every value, so a score can be explained to a retailer or an auditor.
• Reuse: feed the same validated data to the pack, the retailer portal, and the website in each market, instead of retyping it for each.

Where these steps live in separate spreadsheets, supplier emails, and ERP fields, the gap shows when a retailer, a calculation update or a new market asks for every SKU at once.

How ready is your product data for a Nutri-Score request?

Answer each question for your best-selling range first. Every "no" marks where a retailer request, a calculation update, a new market or a mandate would cost the most time.

• Can you list every SKU and the current recipe version behind it?
• Do you hold nutrition values for each ingredient, with the supplier document each value came from?
• Do you know which SKUs changed letter under the updated calculation, and which packs still show the previous version?
• Can you tell, per market, which calculation version a pack follows?
• Is one named person responsible for updating a score when a recipe or supplier specification changes?
• Can you produce a score and its supporting data for any SKU within the window a retailer gives you?
• Do you know today which SKUs have no score at all?

What questions should you ask your data systems and vendors about Nutri-Score?

Use these questions with your own systems team, or with any vendor you evaluate.

1. Does the system calculate the Nutri-Score from recipe data, and can it show a product under both the previous and the updated calculation?
2. When an ingredient changes at a supplier, does the system update every affected recipe and score, or must someone find them?
3. Can you see the history of a score by recipe version and by calculation version?
4. Can you export scores and their supporting data in the format a retailer asks for?
5. How does the system handle products sold in several markets, where labeling rules and calculation dates differ?
6. How long does it take to recalculate the whole range after a calculation update?

Frequently Asked Questions