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Reply to: Food Compass novelty and NOVA category assignments

Nature Food volume 3, pages 584–585 (2022)Cite this article

The Original Article was published on 11 August 2022

replying to A. Drewnowski Nature Food https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00556-1 (2022)

In his recent communication, A. Drewnowski raises several issues around the Food Compass and nutrient profiling. One of these is calling attention to his own nutrient profiling system (NPS), the Nutrient Rich Food Index (NRF). The NRF is calculated using nine nutrients to be encouraged (protein, fibre, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, calcium, iron, magnesium and potassium) minus three nutrients to limit (saturated fat, added sugar and sodium). One advance of the NRF, relative to prior systems, is its scoring of nutrients per 100 kcal, rather than per gram, as discussed further below. Otherwise, the NRF includes many of the same target nutrients as are in other more commonly used NPS, such as NutriScore and Health Star Rating; and also many of the same limitations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, Boston, MA, USA

    Dariush Mozaffarian, Meghan O’Hearn, Naglaa H. El-Abbadi, Jeffrey B. Blumberg & Renata Micha

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  1. Dariush Mozaffarian
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  2. Meghan O’Hearn
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  3. Naglaa H. El-Abbadi
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  4. Jeffrey B. Blumberg
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  5. Renata Micha
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Contributions

D.M. drafted the article. All authors reviewed the article and provided critical feedback and edits.

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Correspondence to Dariush Mozaffarian.

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Competing interests

Outside the submitted work, N.H.E-A., J.B.B. and R.M. report a prior research grant from Danone. Outside the submitted work, D.M. reports research funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Vail Innovative Global Research and Kaiser Permanente; personal fees from Acasti Pharma, Barilla, Danone and Motif FoodWorks; scientific advisory board, Beren Therapeutics, Brightseed, Calibrate, Discern Dx, Elysium Health, Filtricine, HumanCo, January Inc., Perfect Day, Tiny Organics and (ended) Day Two and Season Health; stock ownership in Calibrate and HumanCo; and chapter royalties from UpToDate. Outside the submitted work, J.B.B. reports personal fees from Guiding Stars Licensing Company. M.O. declares no competing interests.

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Mozaffarian, D., O’Hearn, M., El-Abbadi, N.H. et al. Reply to: Food Compass novelty and NOVA category assignments. Nat Food 3, 584–585 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00557-0

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