Want to know exactly how healthy your dinner is? Even if not, Yuka is here for you. It’s an app that scans the barcodes of almost all the products in our cupboards to give them a health rating out of 100. With its handy traffic-light rankings and suggestions for healthier alternatives, it’s likely that — like me and the rest of my east London mums’ WhatsApp group — you’ll be hooked quickly.
It can get out of hand. My use of the app reached a nadir almost immediately, when at 1am I decided to scan the contents of my bathroom cabinet. The chemical laden results were enough to keep me up all night about what went into my children’s bathtime routine.
My main takeaway from my food shop is that oat milk, as a processed product, is not as virtuous as you may think. Once you take into account the rapeseed oil — also found in most butters and spreads — and it’s put me off tea and toast for life.
Naturally, unprocessed items win out, with Weetabix and plain organic wholewheat pasta getting top scores. But, as someone with a gluten intolerance, I realised that while I spent all those years worrying about calories, fat content and protein, I’d overlooked the absolute lack of any sustenance in “free from” food.
But how reliable is it? TikTok sleuths have raised eyebrows over the app’s judging methodology — based on Yuka’s “opinion”, which isn’t always foolproof. Made by a French trio, it’s apparently all the rage across the Channel.
I did get one laugh — at lunch on Saturday, I scanned the barcode on a bottle of cabernet sauvignon. “Yuka does not rate alcohol, but you already know what you’re doing,” the app told me, signing off with a winky emoji. I do already know what I’m doing. And what I’m doing is feeding my children whole foods only from now on — and heading back to cow’s milk ASAP.
