How we grade
A grade you cannot check is just an opinion with a logo on it. So here is the whole thing, and every product page shows the arithmetic for that specific product.
1. Label order is weight order
Ingredients are listed by how much of them is in the pack. We weight them the same way: the first ingredient counts roughly five times as much as the twentieth. That is why sugar in third place moves a grade and sugar in fifteenth barely does.
2. Every ingredient has a score
0 to 100, set from regulatory decisions, peer-reviewed research and NGO analysis. Every one is listed in the ingredient index with the sources it rests on.
3. One bad ingredient cannot hide
A plain average lets a long wholesome list bury something genuinely bad. So if an ingredient scoring 25 or below appears in the first five positions, the grade is capped at C regardless of what else is in there. That cap shows up as its own line on the product page.
4. Then the context
Sugar, saturated fat and salt per 100 g move the score against published thresholds. Fibre and protein move it up. Ultra-processed products take a further hit. Finally, the company behind the brand can shift the score by up to five points up or ten points down for things a label will never tell you — deforestation exposure, labour findings, environmental record.
5. We say when we do not know
An ingredient we have not researched is not quietly counted as fine. It lowers our coverage figure, and below 50% coverage the grade is labelled provisional on the page. We would rather look incomplete than look certain and be wrong.
Where the evidence comes from
- Regulators — FDA, EFSA, WHO/IARC, and national bans and warning-label requirements.
- Peer-reviewed research — preferring systematic reviews and trials over single observational studies.
- NGO and investigative work — for supply-chain and environmental claims a label will not carry.
- Our own analysis — clearly marked as ours wherever it is what a score rests on.
Product records, barcodes and nutrition figures come from Open Food Facts, an open database licensed under the ODbL. The grading layer on top is entirely ours.
Think a grade is wrong?
Tell us which product and which line of the breakdown you disagree with, and what you think the evidence actually says. If you are right we change the score, republish, and say what changed. Nobody pays us to move a grade and nobody can.
corrections@grubfacts.comWhat this is not
GrubFacts is information, not medical advice. It cannot account for your allergies, your medication or your clinician's advice. A grade is about what is in a product, not about whether you personally should eat it.