How we score

What goes into a score

Every product gets a score from 1 (worst) to 10 (best), calculated by a fixed formula from the numbers on the label — the same formula for every brand, every time. We weigh the things that matter most for children’s everyday food:

• Sugar — especially added sugar. Unlike most rating systems, we score added sugar separately from total sugar, following the WHO free-sugars guideline and the American Heart Association’s limit of 25 g of added sugar per day for children.
• Salt, saturated fat and calories, using thresholds aligned with the WHO’s nutrient profile model for our region (WHO EMRO, 2017).
• Additives. Everyday-safe additives (like vitamin C or pectin) cost nothing; unnecessary ones pull the score down; and a short list of colours and sweeteners flagged by European regulators caps a product at amber no matter what else is on the label.
• Fibre and protein earn bonus points — but protein can never “rescue” a high-sugar product (the same rule Nutri-Score added in 2023).

Drinks are judged more strictly

Sugar in a drink is swallowed faster and in bigger amounts than sugar in food, so every serious rating system holds drinks to tougher limits — and so do we, using the sugar bands from Singapore’s Nutri-Grade system (the ones its schools use to decide what can be sold in canteens):

• Only water can score 9–10. Plain milk can still be green, but no drink other than water can be a top score — the same principle as Nutri-Score, where only water gets an A.
• 100% fruit juice never scores above 6 (amber). Juice sugars count as free sugars under the WHO definition, and the American Academy of Pediatrics advises no juice before age 1 and only about half a cup a day for ages 1–3. Juice can be an okay-sometimes choice — never an everyday one.
• Artificial sweeteners cap any product at amber (6) — a “zero sugar” drink can’t score like water, and no sweetened product is rated an everyday choice (Singapore’s Nutri-Grade A excludes sweetened drinks for the same reason).
• 🏫 School-safe badge. Drinks with at most 5 g sugar and 1.2 g saturated fat per 100 ml (and no artificial sweeteners) get a “school-safe drink” badge — the same limits Singapore uses to decide which drinks may be sold in school canteens. Qatar’s school-canteen rules ban foods high in fat, sugar and salt; we use Singapore’s numbers because they are published and measurable.

🏫 The school-safe food badge

Since July 2026, solid foods can earn the school-safe badge too. Each category is checked against Singapore HPB’s Healthier Choice Symbol limits per 100 g — the standard its Healthy Meals in Schools Programme requires of packaged food sold in school canteens (with values always converted to per-100 g first, sugar required to be declared, and artificial sweeteners always disqualifying):

• Yoghurt: fat ≤ 2 g and sugar < 8 g
• Cheese & labneh: fat < 15 g and sodium < 600 mg
• Biscuits: sugar < 21 g, saturated fat < 10 g, sodium < 420 mg
• Chips & snacks: fat < 19 g and sodium ≤ 400 mg
• Breakfast cereals: fat ≤ 3.3 g, sugar < 18 g (we use the stricter regular-cereal cap, not the children’s-cereal one), fibre > 4 g
• Bread: fat < 5 g, sodium < 450 mg, fibre > 3 g
• Chocolate, candy and jam can never carry the badge — their official limits are industry reformulation targets, not school-approval levels.

Qatar’s own school-canteen rules ban foods high in fat, sugar and salt but publish no numeric limits, so we apply Singapore’s published, measurable numbers — see how this fits Qatar’s national health goals.

When a label doesn’t declare added sugar

Gulf and US labels must state added sugar; European labels don’t. When it’s missing, we never give the benefit of the doubt: we estimate it cautiously from the total sugars and mark the product “added sugar not declared”. A product can’t score better just because its label says less. For categories where natural (non-added) sugar isn’t plausible — drinks, confectionery, and (since September 2026) bread and cereal — the whole declared total is treated as added. For plain yoghurt, labneh and cheese, where some sugar is genuinely natural milk sugar (lactose), we subtract a standard lactose allowance first, the same way we already do for plain milk.

Some minimal labels go further and declare no sugar line at all. If such a food lists a sugar-type ingredient (sugar, glucose syrup, honey, fruit-juice concentrate, dates…) on its ingredient list — or if we have no ingredient list on record at all — we don’t guess a number: the product simply can’t score green. It is capped at amber (6) and marked “scored cautiously” until the sugar content can be verified. We can’t verify what isn’t printed. The same cap applies (since September 2026) when a label declares its total sugar but not the added-sugar split, for any category — snacks, sauces, baby food and the like — where we can’t safely guess how much of that sugar is natural versus added.

Two more fairness rules follow the same logic. The “no added sugar” bonus also requires low total sugars — a product full of concentrated fruit sugars can’t earn a green ✓ by declaring “0 g added”, because under the WHO definition those are free sugars too. If a label prints no total-sugars line at all, we check its carbohydrate figure against the same limit — carbohydrate is always at least as much as the sugar inside it, so this can only hold the ✓ back, never hand one out. And if neither figure is printed, the ✓ is not given: a line left off a label never earns a bonus. And additives are recognised however the label spells them — “E102”, “INS 102” or “Tartrazine” are the same colourant and are treated identically.

How a score is decided

Our app reads the real label — nutrition panel and full ingredient list — the formula computes a score, and a person on our team reviews and confirms it. Only products marked verified appear on this site. We keep the exact 1–10 number visible on every product page, with a short note explaining it.

The standards behind our thresholds

Every threshold traces to a published, official source — follow the links and check for yourself:

• WHO — Guideline: sugars intake for adults and children (2015)
• WHO EMRO — Nutrient Profile Model for the Eastern Mediterranean Region (2017)
• American Heart Association — Added sugars and children, Circulation (2016); American Academy of Pediatrics — fruit juice guidance (2017)
• Singapore Health Promotion Board — Nutri-Grade beverage grading
• Singapore HPB — Healthy Meals in Schools Programme and the Healthier Choice Symbol Nutrient Guidelines (April 2020) — the school-safe food badge
• Nutri-Score 2023/2024 algorithm — Santé publique France
• GSO 2233 — GCC labelling standard mandating the added-sugar line

What a score is not

It is a practical guide to help you compare products on the shelf — not medical or dietary advice. Every child is different. If your child has allergies or specific dietary needs, always read the label yourself and speak to a health professional.