The ZERO Score.

Everything is per 100 g / 100 ml

Labels quote wildly different servings — a 12.5 g cookie, a 530 ml tub, a 300 ml can. Comparing those numbers directly would rank a big pack below a small one for no real reason, so every figure is restated per 100 g (per 100 ml for drinks) before it is scored.

Calories (up to 4 pts)

Scored against the product's own category, because categories are not interchangeable: 400 kcal/100 g is unremarkable for a biscuit and impossible for a soda. A drink is only ever compared with drinks.

Sugar (up to 3 pts)

0 g earns full points. Drinks are held to a tighter band than food, because a zero-sugar drink is the whole promise.

Protein (up to 3 pts)

A bonus, not an expectation — 20 g+ per 100 g earns full points, and a product is never punished for having none.

Category fairness

Drinks and sauces aren't expected to contain protein, so they're scored out of what their category can plausibly deliver. A perfect zero soda can score as well as a perfect protein bar.

One honest consequence: every zero-calorie, zero-sugar cola scores 10.0, because on the label they really are the same drink. The score isn't hiding a difference — the differences that remain are taste, caffeine and what sweetens them.

Estimated scores ~8.7

When we have a researched figure from a citable source (brand published nutrition, Open Food Facts label data) but haven't re-checked the printed label ourselves, the score is computed from it and shown hollow with a “~”. The source is always named on the product page.

Unscored products ?

No citable figure at all → no score, just a “?”. We'd rather show a question mark than punish a product for our missing data, and we never fill in numbers we don't have: missing data is shown as “—”. The same applies when a label names no measurable serving (“per piece”): rather than guess how much a piece weighs, we leave it unscored.

Sweeteners are not scored

Ranking aspartame against stevia against maltitol would be a health claim, and we don't make those. What sweetens a product is published as fact instead — the name, the INS number and what it contributes — in the sweetener index.