Is Yuka App Legit, Reliable or Accurate? If you’ve ever wondered how healthy the items on your shopping list are, now you have a tool available on your phone to find out.
Yuka is an app for iOS with which you can check how healthy they are based on the barcode of each product in your supermarket. In addition, it is not only available for food products but also for cosmetic products.
Its objective is to improve the way we consume and our health since it offers us very clear information about everything we buy. The application provides simplicity and transparency to understand the labels of our products.
We tested the application that everyone is talking about (and the most downloaded) to assess the quality of the food products we consume on a daily basis. So get ready because we are going to tell you everything about this new application that scans food products.
What is Yuka App?
Yuka is the most used and popular app, with more than 10 million users and a database with more than 7 million products and 300,000 cosmetic products. Yuka is an app that helps us analyze groceries, drinks, and cosmetics. The app follows 3 criteria:
- 60% of the Nutriscore score to determine its nutritional quality.
- 30% based on the presence of additives.
- 10% if the product is organic or not.
The app rates products from 1 to 100 as excellent, good, poor, or mediocre. It even shows a tab with the positive and negative components of the product, taking information from OpenFoodFacts. This app is characterized by heavily penalizing addictives and greatly rewarding what Nutriscore rewards (the presence of fruits, vegetables, nuts, fiber, and protein). It even offers healthier alternative recommendations to products that, in theory, are not.
Who created Yuka App?
Today, Yuka is a team of 11 people who are very determined to make a relevant project: First, there are the three founders: Julie, François, and Benoit. Julie deals with communication and content creation. As for the two brothers, they take care of the technical part: they are the ones who have developed the application.
Is Yuka App Reliable? How reliable is the Yuka app?
This app evaluates information about purchased products and the impact they have on our health. But the evaluation criteria could be more reliable, can lead to confusion for the consumer, and encourage the consumption of ultra-processed foods.
How Does Yuka App Work to know if a food is healthy or not
To talk about safety when making a decision based on the app, you have to assess how the app decides if a food or cosmetic is healthy. When we talk about food, the app divides and is based on 3 criteria, which are the nutritional quality calculated by the nutri-score (a scoring system of the French national nutrition and health program, which takes into account calories, sugar, salt, saturated fats, proteins, fibers, fruits, and legumes), the presence of additives and whether the product is organic or not.
Disadvantages of the Yoka App
The main problem with this app is that it gives the same importance to all the additives, some of which are essential and which should not affect the grades. In addition to that, we must also take into account that there is no study that says that an “organic” product is healthier than one that is not.
Yuka App’s Nutritional Assessment System on Trial
The scoring system they have chosen seems quite reasonable to us. It is based on recommendations from European regulatory agencies that usually issue very reliable data. It is a great tool to remove doubts when purchasing and also for healthy people who want a more conscious and healthy diet. However, it is important to emphasize that the app should not be used by certain special groups of people who follow specific diets due to some special metabolic need or due to the presence of any disease, etc.
Is Yuka App Trustworthy?
It seems to us to be a good tool for consultations in general, but it does not take into account the individual characteristics of each user, so people who need an individualized assessment because they are looking for a specific objective (such as weight loss, or a diet to improve resistance and toning in a sport, etc.) or who have some symptom or disease (such as celiac disease, irritable bowel syndrome, diabetes mellitus, etc.) should always seek specific and individual nutritional guidance.
Is Yuka App Reliable for Cosmetics?
Yes! Yuka App also scans cosmetics and rates them. The scoring of cosmetics is based on the analysis of their ingredients based on their potential effects on health: endocrine disruptor, carcinogen, allergen, or irritant. The potential risks associated with each ingredient appear in the application, with the associated scientific sources.
Here it is important to remember that there are different types of scientific studies. The conclusions presented by one type of study may not have the same level of scientific relevance as those presented by another type of study. It would be necessary to analyze each study that the app uses as a reference to categorize each ingredient to find out if the data it uses as a source is reliable and can be generalized and reproducible or not.
This is a very controversial issue, and it is regulated by a European regulatory framework (which is not cited as a source of data for the app) that already establishes standards for the production and marketing of cosmetic products.
Is Yuka App Legit or Safe?
From our point of view, this is the most reliable source for analyzing a cosmeceutical product’s safety. We should only rely on randomized scientific studies if we are sure of their level of scientific evidence.
Yuka vs MyRealFood – Which One is Better?
Experts recommend taking the Nutriscore system as the most “correct” and reliable. This is the way for users to be 100% informed of the quality of the food they are consuming. Nobody knows the products better than their own manufacturers, and if we take this into account, Yuka, thanks to its larger database and the fact that it is based (in part) on this system, would be much more recommendable than MyRealFood.
Despite all this, the most “reliable” way to measure what we are eating and the quality of our diet is the use of common sense. If you want to lead a healthier life, we recommend you use these apps and ask the people who serve you in the different establishments and points of sale, looking for reliable information about all the food you eat. In addition to that, it is also advisable to consult a registered dietitian in case of seeking to improve our diet, and only he can indicate to us in a personalized way what would be the best diet for our lifestyle and the needs of our body.
How do I use Yuka app?
Simply open the app, tap scan, and aim it at the barcode on anything from a shampoo bottle to a pack of cookies. A short glimpse indicates whether a product is potentially harmful to your health (green is good, red is bad), and a breakdown explains the score and suggests alternatives.
How do I scan with Yuka?
Then, in the application, click the “Scan” icon and hold the phone screen in front of the product’s barcode to scan it. You may also access “Scan” mode directly from your mobile phone by clicking here. On Android, tap the scan symbol in the bottom right corner.
Why is Yuka not scanning?
For the scan to work, you must make sure: 1) That you’ve authorized access to the camera. If not, you’ll need to change this in your phone’s settings, click on “Apps”, then on “Yuka” and finally on “Permissions”. Then check “Camera”.
Who is the owner of Yuka app?
Julie Chapon is the owner of Yuka app. Yuka has 4 executives. Yuka’s founder is Julie Chapon.
Conclusion
Yuka considers 3 objective criteria: nutritional quality, the presence of additives, and the biological dimension of the product. After the analysis through your label, we will see an assessment from 1 to 100 with a kind of traffic light. In the case that it is red or amber, we will see the alternatives that we can add to our shopping list so that we ensure the real quality of each product.
