Yuka, the popular food-scanning app — which has become a go-to resource for 15 million Americans and one in three people in France — told The Cool Down that it's now going beyond education by empowering consumers to hold companies accountable for their products.
This November, the app is releasing a new feature that lets users call out brands that are using harmful or controversial ingredients by sending personalized requests asking manufacturers to stop.
"I think today people really want more transparency about the products they buy daily," Julie Chapon, Yuka's co-founder, told The Cool Down in an exclusive interview. "… They want to make better choices for their health, for the environment. I think that's why Yuka has been so successful — it's because [we] give them a tool to take back the power on their own consumption."
The app launched in 2022 in the U.S. and is the No. 1 free health and fitness app in the Apple Store. Yuka says it has 60 million users worldwide, with consumers scanning 68 products every second.
"Everybody eats, so basically the app can be useful to anyone," Chapon said. In our conversation, she walked us through how Yuka hopes to help people live healthier — and make an impact through consumers' choices.
🥕 How to use Yuka to eat healthier
"We have a huge, very young [user] base of people, but at the same time ... we also have people over 80 years old because the app is so simple to use," Chapon said.
Once users download the Yuka app, they can pick up a product and scan its bar code like taking a picture.
The app deciphers and analyzes all those potentially confusing ingredients, giving each one a rating and each product a score out of 100 with an accompanying color (green = risk-free; red = hazardous). For those red and orange products, Yuka recommends healthier alternatives.
According to Yuka's impact report, which surveyed 20,000 American app users, 88% of people said they feel like they're in better health and 92% of users have been buying less ultraprocessed food since they started using the app.
Beyond personal health and wellness, Yuka also accounts for a product's impact on the planet. For example, are any ingredients in beauty products polluting the environment? If so, it'll get a lower score on the app. And organic foods get a ratings boost because they avoid chemical pesticides that can harm humans and the environment.
🚨 The big announcement
Yuka has a two-part mission. First: help people make better choices. Second: as a united user base, push manufacturers to improve what's in their products.
"In the U.S., we have 15 million users … and I'm very happy about that," said Chapon. "But 15 million users is not enough to start having an impact on manufacturers. So in the U.S., we still are at the first level of our mission, and the real challenge is … to start having an impact at a bigger level and to push manufacturers here in the U.S. to improve what's in the product — to stop using controversial ingredients, to reduce the levels of salt, sugar, and that sort of thing."
That's why Yuka is about to release a new feature to "give our users the power to go further, not just by stopping buying products, but by calling out the brands that use controversial additives and ask [them] to stop it."
For red-labeled products (which contain high-risk additives and ingredients), users will be able to click on a special feature that will open a prefilled email to the customer service team of that particular brand.
"You will just have to click send," Chapon told us.
"You will also have the possibility to call out the brand on X by your tweets," she mentioned, noting that the new feature for email and social will be available starting this November.
🍨 The proof is in the pudding
Yuka is already seeing success driving ingredient changes in France, where the app first launched and where a third of people now use it.
With that kind of collective power, "you can imagine that it has a huge impact on a manufacturer's sales if they make bad products," said Chapon.
Chapon told us that Yuka is contacted "daily by manufacturers asking us to update information of the products [on the app] because they have reformulated the products and improved what's inside." For example, major retailer Intermarché "announced that they have been reformulating 900 products by removing 140 food additives to achieve better ratings on Yuka," Chapon said.
Yuka has also successfully petitioned the French government to reduce the amount of allowable nitrates (which have been linked to the risk of cancer) in food products like deli meat. "In France, we have a lot of charcuterie, so we eat a lot of nitrates," Chapon said. After getting more than 500,000 signatures and going through multiple court cases, "we managed to get a plan to reduce the levels of nitrates in charcuterie."
📋 How the rating system works
Yuka has two different rating systems, one for food and the other for beauty products, both of which are scored out of 100 points.
Food scoring: 60% of that score is based on nutritional quality (think: calories, sugar, protein, and saturated fats).
Then 30% is based on whether there are food additives present. Chapon explained: "We have a toxicologist and her job is to review all the scientific studies [e.g., from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration] … and opinions of collective expert reports as well as all independent studies, and depending on that, she will assign a level of risk to each additive." Users have access to "all the information in the app about the risk and the scientific sources."
The final 10% of the score is based on whether the product is organic, given the health and environmental benefits of not using synthetic fertilizers or pesticides.
Cosmetic scoring: "For cosmetic products it's a bit simpler because we base our analysis on the ingredient list," Chapon explained, similar to what the app does for food additives.
Depending on an ingredient's effects on both human health and environmental impact, Yuka's toxicologists assign a level of risk to each one. "We take into account both the health and environmental impact, because you have a lot of cosmetic ingredients that are pollutants and toxic to aquatic life," Chapon noted.
🤔 Responding to the critics
Like any popular app, especially one with a rating system, Yuka has its critics — who, in this case, have taken issue with the fact that the app recognizes ingredients but not specific amounts of that ingredient.
According to Chapon, there are three reasons the app doesn't do this:
1. "We don't have this information. It's not provided by manufacturers."
2. "Even if you have a small quantity of an ingredient in a product, you have some ingredients that you can find in almost all products." So for beauty products, "you have some ingredients you can find everywhere, in your shampoo, in your soap, and your makeup. … At the end of the day, you have been exposed to a much higher quantity of this ingredient because it's so spread in all products.
3. "Scientists agree … that quantity of an ingredient today doesn't determine its level of risk." For example, Chapon and leading biologist Jean-Baptiste Fini recently explained why endocrine disruptors (chemicals that mess with our hormones) are harmful even at low levels.
Beyond that, Chapon wants critics of the app's rating system to understand that "we are not an app saying 'don't buy this category of products, stop eating that category of products,'" she noted. "We are not into that. We really try to find better alternatives for all kinds of products."
💯 What it means to be 100% independent
"The most important thing about Yuka is that we are 100% independent," Chapon told us. That means (1) it doesn't display any in-app ads, (2) it doesn't receive money from brands to improve their ratings, and (3) it doesn't sell user data. That allows the app to provide transparent information to users who are trying to make healthier, environmentally sound choices.
The for-profit company makes money by offering a premium subscription that provides expanded food-preferences tracking — such as gluten-free and vegan — and other features beyond the free version of the app for a "pay what you want" fee starting at $10 per year.
Despite rumors that the app was bought by L'Oreal or Carrefour, Chapon said Yuka will stay independent. "There are always rumors about our independence and … I'm trying to fight for that."
🗣️ Anna Robertson conducted this interview for The Cool Down.
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