Scoring

Every product you scan gets a score from 0 to 100, and higher is better. But that number isn’t a universal verdict on the product — it’s a score for you. Two people can scan the same jar and get different numbers, and each of them can see exactly why.

This page explains what goes into the score, how your own profile changes it, and the rules we hold ourselves to.

The short version

• A score from 0 to 100. Higher is better.
• Built from three things: nutrition, additives, and how heavily processed a product is.
• Your own preferences, allergens and diet decide how much each of those counts for you.
• Every score opens up into a breakdown showing what made the number.
• The same product, the same profile and the same version of Nime always give the same score.

What goes into the score

Three components make up the number. Nutrition carries the most weight, then additives, then how heavily processed the product is.

Nutrition

The largest share, because the evidence behind it is the strongest. We look at sugar, salt and saturated fat, and at calories per 100g. Fibre and protein count in your favour — they can pull a product back up.

We keep the underlying grams, not just a letter or a final verdict. That matters: if you tell us you’re watching sugar, we need the actual grams to weigh it more heavily for you. A single letter throws that information away.

Additives

Most apps count additives. We judge them. Every E-number gets a risk rating based on safety assessments from bodies like EFSA and ANSES — from harmless to concerning.

One concerning additive therefore weighs more than a handful of harmless ones. A long label full of innocuous ingredients doesn’t drag a product down, and there’s a ceiling on this component so nothing gets penalised endlessly just for having a lot printed on the pack.

Processing

We look at how heavily processed a product is — but we keep this component deliberately modest, and we adjust it per product category.

Why? The evidence that ultra-processed food is harmful is strongest for processed meat and sugary drinks. For products like wholemeal bread and yoghurt it’s much weaker, and for some outcomes it points the other way. A flat “ultra-processed is bad” penalty would hit fortified wholegrain cereal as hard as a hot dog. We don’t think that’s fair, so we don’t do it.

What the score means

Next to the number is a word, so you can see where a product sits at a glance: from Excellent and Good, through Fair, to Poor and Very Poor.

Those boundaries are fixed — it’s your score that moves between them. That’s why the same product can land in Fair for one person and Poor for another.

The labels next to the score

Alongside the number you’ll see short labels. They don’t count towards the score — they point at something you may want to see for yourself.

Some come straight from the product data: High in fibre, High in salt, Ultra-processed, Contains seed oils. These follow fixed rules — the same product always produces the same label.

Others are about the company behind the product, not what’s in it. Connected to lab-grownmeans there is public reporting of that company investing in, or partnering on, cultivated food. It says nothing about this product or its ingredients — it’s there so you know.

Think a label is wrong? Tell us, with a source. We remove company labels as soon as the evidence behind them doesn’t hold up.

Your score is yours

This is what makes Nime’s number different from a verdict that applies to the whole shelf. What you tell us during setup changes the calculation in two ways.

1. It changes how much things count

You choose what you care about — sugar, additives, seed oils, nutrition, or how processed something is. Whatever you tick starts weighing more heavily in your score.

You also decide how cautious Nime is. The sensitivity setting — Relaxed, Balanced or Strict— scales the precautionary parts of the score, meaning additives and processing. Find most food apps alarmist? Turn it down. Rather be too careful than too late? Turn it up. We don’t make that call for you.

2. Some things are absolute

Not everything should be a gentle nudge. Two things override the score entirely:

• Allergens.If a product contains something on your allergen list, it gets flagged and the score is capped — however good the nutrition looks otherwise.
• Diet.A non-vegan product on a vegan profile, or a non-halal product on a halal profile, gets an explicit notice with a reason — never a silent deduction you can’t trace.

Every score shows its working

Tap a score and it opens into its components. For each one you see what came off and why, down to the individual factor: which grams of sugar, which additive, which processing level. No black box, and no verdict you just have to take on trust.

When we don’t know

Not every product has complete data. When too much is missing we don’t invent it: we show that the score is an estimate, and we cap how high it can go. A product with little known data can’t accidentally come out looking excellent.

Unknown doesn’t mean safe — but it doesn’t mean bad either. It means unknown, and we say so.

The rules we hold ourselves to

• Same input, same output. The same product with the same profile on the same version of Nime always gives the same score. Scores are not improvised by an AI that might say something else tomorrow.
• No silent deductions.Everything that lowers the number appears in the breakdown. If you can’t see where something came from, that’s our mistake.
• We don’t fake what we don’t know.Missing data lowers a score’s confidence — we don’t fill the gap with a guess.
• The score is about the product. Information about the company behind it stays separate, as a label, and never hidden inside the number.
• We adjust.The weighting isn’t a law of nature. When better evidence arrives we change it — and a score you saw before will change with it. That comes with the territory.

What Nime isn’t

Nime is a shopping aid, not medical advice and not a diagnostic tool. It doesn’t replace guidance from a doctor or a registered dietitian. The score exists to make what’s actually in a product readable in the time it takes to scan a barcode — what you do with that is up to you.

Questions about a score?

Something not right, or think we’ve got a product or a company wrong? We want to hear it — corrections with sources get read and acted on. Get in touch through our contact form.