Methodology

Last updated: February 25, 2026

FoodKnower provides two scores to help you understand both how industrially processed a food is and how likely it is engineered to encourage overeating. The scores are designed to be interpretable, consistent, and conservative where uncertainty exists.

Food Integrity Score

The Food Integrity score estimates how industrially processed a food is. It is anchored to the NOVA classification framework (Monteiro et al.) and extended with ingredient-level signals that often indicate heavy processing.

Key inputs

• Additive burden — counts and classifies emulsifiers, sweeteners, flavour enhancers, colours, and preservatives. Higher counts and higher-impact additive types reduce integrity.
• Industrial markers — flags ingredients commonly used in industrial processing (for example: maltodextrin, modified starch, glucose/corn syrups, hydrogenated fats, protein isolates).
• Functional role stacking — estimates how many engineered functions are present, such as sweetener systems, texture engineering, preservation, colour, and umami enhancement.
• Category priors — applies small adjustments based on product category to avoid over-penalizing categories where certain ingredients are structurally required.
• Guardrails — protects traditional and single-ingredient foods (for example: plain bread, plain yogurt, basic grains) from being over-scored as ultra-processed.

Overeating Risk Score

The Overeating Risk score estimates how likely a food is engineered to override natural satiety signals. It combines nutrient thresholds with ingredient formulation signals associated with hyperpalatability.

Weighted sub-scores

• Nutrient analysis (40%) — evaluates nutrition data against the three hyperpalatable clusters from Fazzino et al. (2019): Fat + Sodium, Fat + Sugar, and Carbs + Sodium.
• Ingredient formulation analysis (60%) — scans the ingredient list for palatability signals, including: sugar/fat/salt positioning, synergistic reward combos (sugar x fat, fat x salt, sweet x salty), and snack-architecture patterns (chips/crackers, chocolate, flavoured-salty).

Adjustments

• Beverage penalty — liquid calories tend to bypass satiety signals, so beverages receive a small penalty.
• Simplicity bonus — short, clean ingredient lists receive a small downward adjustment in risk.

Important notes

• Scores are estimates designed for consistency and user understanding, not medical advice.
• When data is incomplete (for example, missing nutrition), the score is conservative and may rely more heavily on ingredient signals.
• Methodology evolves as new research and validation data become available.

If you have questions about how a specific food was scored, contact us at contact@foodknower.com.