Nutritional Value Score rates foods based on global health priorities

Nutrient profiling systems (NPS) are used to rate foods by nutritional value using food composition data. NPS have different purposes and limitations. Existing NPS have not adequately incorporated foods and food composition data from low- and middle-income countries and accounted for the nutritional needs of these populations in their scoring criteria. Recent publications have also called for developing NPS for global use ^{and for assessing environmental impacts and affordability of foods. To address these needs, we developed the Nutritional Value Score (NVS), which is based on nutrients of global health priority and dietary factors predictive of noncommunicable disease risk. The NVS uses locally available, commonly consumed foods from Indonesia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, and the United States and, where possible, local food composition data. The NVS effectively identifies nutritious food groups and discriminates nutritional differences within food groups, which can be used to target the most nutritious foods for policy and programmatic interventions in low- and middle-income countries. It also enables more nutritionally relevant comparisons than mass or energy in environmental impact and affordability assessments. Although further validation is needed, initial testing suggests the NVS is suitable for identifying foods with high nutritional value to aid decision making and can be adapted to different contexts globally.}