A new food rating system that gave high marks to Lucky Charms and Cocoa Puffs while belittling eggs came under fire recently, with Fox News taking it to task in several segments (one with me), and Joe Rogan posting that the rankings were “complete, undeniable, indefensible bullshit.” This sounds harsh, and the lead author, from Tufts University, pushed back, saying his system—called the “Food Compass”—was actually “more holistic” than most such rubrics and had been misrepresented. So I took another look, and here’s what I found: the Food Compass is even worse than I’d thought. And Tufts is funded by quite a few of the same companies whose ultra-processed foods are awarded top rankings.
First, some history: The Tufts Food Compass, with its 8,032 food items was published by Nature Food in October 2021 and did not get much attention until a group of scholars wrote a critique several months later, complete with a “pyramid” chart that would go viral. (The paper came out as a pre-print and could not find a publisher for nearly a year, but perhaps due to all the recent publicity, it was finally published last week in the Journal of Nutrition.)
Could so much familiarity with food industry actors have influenced the Food Compass? A tip from a reader (thank you, Coley Hudgins) pointed me to the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition’s Food & Nutrition Innovation Institute, which receives funds from some 60 companies, including quite a few of those whose products get top ranks in the Compass. This includes Kellogg’s, a Tufts Institute “Gold Member,” which had 40 of its products included in the Food Compass (see chart, above).
R&I~Smit
Article URL : https://unsettledscience.substack.com/p/tufts-food-compassits-worse-than