It produces a health score ranging from 0 to 100 and provides a colour-coded rating, which categorises products as excellent, good, mediocre or poor for health.

The scoring system is based on three weighted factors: nutritional quality (60%), presence and risk of additives (30%) and organic certification status (10%).

Using frameworks like Nutri-Score and data from the European Food Safety Authority among others, Yuka evaluates calories, sugar, saturated fats, salt, protein, fibre and fruit or vegetable content, alongside toxicological analyses of additives. It cannot detect the presence of glyphosate or other health-destroying toxic pesticides, but it does give 'organic' a 10% weighting.

The app offers clear, plain-language ingredient breakdowns and suggests healthier alternatives when a scan returns a low rating. It prides itself on independence, refusing brand sponsorship or advertising. The people behind Yuka make their money through premium features that customers pay for.

This seems to be a convenient tool, and it's for good reason that tens of millions around the world are using the app. But food is supposed to be nourishing and life-affirming. Now we need an app to detect its toxicity.

How did we arrive here?

Behind every barcode scanned lies a vast network of production and distribution shaped by agribusiness monopolies, chemical-intensive farming, processing industries and regulatory frameworks that prioritise market growth and corporate margins over human and ecological wellbeing. The health hazards Yuka identifies are not accidents—they are the direct result of a foodscape engineered for shelf-life, profit and convenience rather than nutrition or human need.

The Yuka app offers a convenient, consumer-friendly tool that provides users with clear, colour-coded health scores and ingredient breakdowns to navigate a corporate-dominated foodscape. However, by reducing complex systemic issues to individual choices at the supermarket shelf, for all its good intentions, Yuka individualises responsibility for food health while possibly obscuring the larger political and economic forces behind unhealthy products.

It cannot name the agribusiness conglomerates, highlight the regulatory capture or show the root causes behind global inequities in food access that sustain this harmful system. The app simplifies a profound structural food crisis into a matter of personal consumer decisions, diverting attention from the urgent need to confront the forces and policies that have shaped the prevailing food system.