There is not a single thing in there about food additives, under nutrients micronutrient coverage is ridiculously narrow (only one kind of vitamin and two minerals), fat and fat quality are absent (and the other health-related macronutrient present - sugar - shows very below average scoring), the protein quality criteria seems designed to reward meat-heavy diets (which would’ve been penalized on any fat criteria but, surprise, surprise, that’s not included in that metric) and most of that entry is about “standards” (i.e. talk, not action) - “we know how to do things right” is not the same as “we do things right” when it comes to policy (that whole section is especially hilarious given that none of the best food practices in the World as show by actual life expectancy, such as the Mediterranean Diet, are at all the result of having a good “national nutrition plan” - you really got to be taking the piss or designing your model to yield specific conclusions if you’re measuring “food quality” on the quality of the “national nutrition plan”).
Oh, and there’s nothing there about long term outcomes, such as obesity rates and life expectation.
This being The Economist I’m not surprised at the model design: they seem to have gone for “measuring only that which is easy to measure” in order to get Worldwide coverage, plus quite some results-oriented model design - which is a common practice of theirs - which would explain things like their weird choice of micro nutrients, excluding fat (of all things!) or looking at national nutrition standards instead of looking at food related health outcomes (such as obesity or cardivascular diseases).
There is not a single thing in there about food additives, under nutrients micronutrient coverage is ridiculously narrow (only one kind of vitamin and two minerals), fat and fat quality are absent (and the other health-related macronutrient present - sugar - shows very below average scoring), the protein quality criteria seems designed to reward meat-heavy diets (which would’ve been penalized on any fat criteria but, surprise, surprise, that’s not included in that metric) and most of that entry is about “standards” (i.e. talk, not action) - “we know how to do things right” is not the same as “we do things right” when it comes to policy (that whole section is especially hilarious given that none of the best food practices in the World as show by actual life expectancy, such as the Mediterranean Diet, are at all the result of having a good “national nutrition plan” - you really got to be taking the piss or designing your model to yield specific conclusions if you’re measuring “food quality” on the quality of the “national nutrition plan”).
Oh, and there’s nothing there about long term outcomes, such as obesity rates and life expectation.
This being The Economist I’m not surprised at the model design: they seem to have gone for “measuring only that which is easy to measure” in order to get Worldwide coverage, plus quite some results-oriented model design - which is a common practice of theirs - which would explain things like their weird choice of micro nutrients, excluding fat (of all things!) or looking at national nutrition standards instead of looking at food related health outcomes (such as obesity or cardivascular diseases).