by Maureen Wise, on March 14, 2023
If you’re an Organic Lawn Care customer, it’s a safe bet that you care about what goes into your soil and local waterways. You’re protecting your family, pets (and yourself!) from common toxins in traditional lawn care systems. So if you’re considering what you put on your lawn, we bet you’re also considering what you put into and onto your body. We’ve been using the YUKA app to help consider what we’re feeding our families and putting on our bodies and we want to recommend it to you.
YUKA is a company based in France. Their app helps users better understand product labels. The app scans labels and analyzes the health impact of both food and cosmetic products. Once scanned, the app provides detailed information for each product and explains how it was analyzed. When a product comes back with a poor score, the app will offer recommendations for similar products that are better for your health.
Food products and cosmetic products are analyzed differently. Each product receives a score from 1 to 100 along with a color to demonstrate that score from red to yellow to green. Food product scores are based 60% on nutritional value, taking into account calories, sugar, salt, saturated fats, protein, fiber, fruits, and vegetables. The amount of additives in the food is 30% of the score. Each additive is assigned a risk level - if an additive is hazardous, the food product can not get better than a 49/100 score. The last 10% of the food score is based on whether the product is organic or not. Cosmetics scores are based on analyzing each ingredient in the product. Each ingredient is assigned a risk level according to its potential effects on health or the environment, taking into account endocrine disruption, carcinogenic potential, allergens, potential irritants, and environmental pollution potential.
YUKA is an independent project, not funded by brands that may influence their work. It’s also ad-free. Additionally, YUKA does not share user data with third parties.
The YUKA blog is full of information on how specific additives may harm people as well as lots of healthy recipes.
A premium version is available that allows users to scan items even if their phone doesn’t have a signal, search for a product without scanning, and take personal dietary preferences into account.
We have learned a lot using the YUKA app and would love to hear if you’ve used it and found value in it too.
