French supermarket chain says it will remove 140 additives, changing 900 food recipes by 2020.
ADVERTISEMENTFrench supermarket chain Intermarché had said it will remove 140 food additives by the end of 2020, changing 900 food recipes in the process.
They will use a popular phone application used by 11 million people in France to scan products and find out what additives are present in them.
"Today's consumer is ready to change their consumption habits and review their standards for products better for their health," the Intermarché marketing team told Euronews.
"Through this global quality improvement plan, we have worked to best meet their expectations and as quickly as possible."
The phone app they're working with to help analyse their products is Yuka—an application that scans and rates products based on the ingredients and additives. Though they do not have an official partnership with the app, they are in contact with the independent company.
"Yuka's mission is above all to help our users to decipher labels so that they can consume more intelligently," Ophélia Bierschwale, Yuka's spokesperson, told Euronews.
"But we also want to push the industry to offer better products, and this is what is happening today through this announcement, which is very positive."
She said she was delighted to see that a "major player" in the French food industry was taking steps to improve products.
The application says that at least 95% of its users stopped buying products with controversial additives, according to an impact study they conducted with 230,000 users.
The phone application is most widely used in France but is also available in Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain, and the United Kingdom. They hope to spread to the United States and Canada before the end of the year.
The September press release for Les Mousquetaires group, which owns the supermarket chain, states that 52% of French people say they ready to pay more for quality products, which they say is a six-point increase in four years.
Intermarché's marketing team says that they will be reworking about 15% of their products.
