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Yuka scores and organic labels
Yuka scans a barcode and gives a product a score out of 100. A certification audits how the product was made. They measure different things, which is why a certified organic product can still score low. Here is how to use both.
What Yuka is
Yuka is a mobile app that scans the barcode on food and cosmetic products and returns a score out of 100. Yuka says it carries no advertising, that it is funded by a paid premium version of the app, and that no brand can pay to influence how its products are rated.
Organic Babee is not affiliated with Yuka, is not endorsed by it, and does not use its data.
How Yuka scores food
Yuka publishes its method. For food, the score is built from three parts:
| Part of the score | Weight |
|---|---|
| Nutritional quality | 60% |
| Additives | 30% |
| Organic certification | 10% |
Why an organic product can score low
Look at the weights. Being certified organic is worth a tenth of a food's score. Nutrition is worth six times as much. Organic cookies are still cookies: the sugar and saturated fat count against them exactly as they would in a conventional box.
Yuka also caps the score of any food containing an additive it rates as high risk, so one ingredient can hold a product under 50 whatever else is in it.
A certification and a scanner answer different questions. A seal such as USDA Organic is the result of an audit of how something was grown and made. A Yuka score is one company's method applied to the ingredient list and the nutrition panel. Neither is a regulator's finding about safety, and they often disagree for good reasons.
How to use Yuka next to this site
- 1
Start with the certification
Our category pages tell you which seal means something for that kind of product and which products carry it.
- 2
Scan it yourself
In the shop, or when the parcel arrives, scan the barcode with the app. You get the score for the exact version in your hand, which matters because recipes change.
- 3
Read the reason, not only the colour
Yuka shows why a product lost points. A low score for sugar in a jam tells you something different from a low score for an additive.
Why we do not print Yuka scores
Yuka's terms of use allow people to use its ratings for personal, non-commercial purposes, and they forbid collecting its data automatically. This site earns affiliate commissions, so printing those scores next to product links is not ours to do without Yuka's permission.
If Yuka agrees, a score will appear on each product card with the date we scanned it. Until then the honest route is the one above: we check the certification, and you scan the barcode.
Sources
Each page was opened and read on October 11, 2026.