The Nuven Standard

Every product on Nuven carries a rating from 0 to 5 stars. A 5 is not a marketing badge — it means the item cleared all four evaluation dimensions below and passed our No-Go additive screen. A product with a banned-tier additive is capped at 1.5 stars no matter how well it scores elsewhere. That cap is enforced deterministically, in code, after the language model returns its scores.

Each dimension is scored 0–5 by a language model working from the product's ingredient list, nutrition panel, certifications on the label, and Open Food Facts data. The final rating is the (rounded) average.

1. Nutritional profile. Nutri-Score grade, added sugar, saturated fat, sodium, protein and fiber density. High- sodium, high-added-sugar products score lower even when the ingredient list looks clean.
2. Ingredient quality. Are the ingredients whole foods you'd recognize, or industrial derivatives? A cereal whose first three ingredients are "whole wheat, oats, honey" scores higher than one starting with "corn syrup, refined flour, natural flavor."
3. Certifications & sourcing. USDA Organic, Non-GMO Project Verified, third-party certifications, single-origin claims backed by the label. We do not reward "all natural" — that phrase is unregulated.
4. Processing level. NOVA group 1 (whole/minimally processed) scores highest. NOVA 4 (ultra-processed) rarely scores above 3.

Before scoring, every product is checked against our public No-Go List — additives banned or restricted in the European Union or Singapore that remain legal in the United States. Two tiers:

• Banned tier — a hit caps the product at 1.5 stars and files it in the Rejection Log. Example: potassium bromate (E924), titanium dioxide (E171).
• Restricted tier — flagged in the product's detail page as a caveat but does not force a cap. Example: BHA (E320), synthetic dye Red 40 (E129).

The screen runs on structured additive tags and free-text ingredient search with word-boundary matching, so aliases like "bromated flour" are caught.

Take a bag of rainbow sprinkles. Label reads: sugar, corn starch, hydrogenated palm kernel oil, artificial colors (Yellow 5, Red 40, Blue 1), titanium dioxide, natural flavor.

• No-Go screen: titanium dioxide (E171) — banned tier. Rating capped at 1.5.
• Nutritional profile: 2.0 (almost all added sugar).
• Ingredient quality: 1.5 (hydrogenated fat, three synthetic dyes).
• Processing level: 1.0 (NOVA 4).

Final rating: 1.5 / 5, with the banned cap doing the binding work. The product is delisted from search and appears in the public Rejection Log with a citable reason.

A grocery site that hides its rubric is asking you to trust it. We would rather you check us. The No-Go List, the Rejection Log, and this methodology are all URL-addressable and cite primary sources (EU Regulation 1333/2008 Annex II, US 21 CFR, Singapore Food Regulations). If a citation is wrong, email us and we'll correct it.