[00:00:05] Melissa Traverse: Hello, and thank you for joining. I am Melissa Traverse, Director of Community here at BevNET & Nosh, and I am excited to welcome you to the Nonbase Podcast, a podcast built to help CPG owners and operators navigate growth challenges and grow more profitable businesses. Be sure to check out nonbase.com, BevNET's platform made for the CPG community, where you can find this episode and so much more. More consumers are making purchase decisions based on a single nutritional score, whether it comes from a retailer, a certification, or an app. And increasingly, when it comes to apps, that score is coming from Yooka. Yooka has grown rapidly without advertising, and it's starting to have real consequences for brands, from influencing what gets bought at shelf to pushing companies to change their formulations altogether. Today, I am joined by Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad leads Yuca's U.S. business to explain how it all works, what's actually happening behind the scores, and how brands should be thinking about this if they want to stay competitive. Gabriella, thanks so much for joining the Non-Based Podcast.
[00:01:17] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Thank you so much for having me today, Melissa. My name is Gabriela, as you introduced me so well. I help spearhead Yooka's development in the United States. We're a French-based app. We are available in 12 different countries today, and we have just over 80 million users, with 25 million being in the US. We've grown exponentially throughout the past two, three years, and we're only continuing. And for people who've never heard of Yooka, The best way to describe it is that we're an app that when you scan the barcode of food and cosmetic products, you get a score out of 100 that rates the health impact of that product. So once you scan the barcode, you'll have access to a detailed health sheet, understanding exactly why a product was rated that way out of 100. And you'll get explanations on different additives, if that's present in the food that you're scanning. And let's say the food that you scanned or the cosmetic that you scanned is poorly rated, you're going to get a recommendation within that same category of an alternative that is well rated and multiple alternatives. So when you're shopping and you're scanning, you'll always be able to find a product that is better rated in the store that you're in currently.
[00:02:33] Melissa Traverse: At Expo West this year in March in Anaheim, California, I saw the little carrot, which is the Yooka app logo. I saw it in so many different places. And I think I had heard of it before, but really at Expo was where I sort of saw it explode and, you know, multiple brands were talking about their Yooka score and how it affects consumer buy-in. You said that Yooka is used by 25 million consumers in the United States. Is that the right number?
[00:03:04] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Yes, that is the right number. Every day we actually get 25,000 more users in the U.S. who join our app and entirely organically, meaning that we've never paid a single cent in advertising. It's usually through word of mouth where someone will stumble across a shopper scanning products and ask them what they're using or a family member will show a friend the product that they're using and this app. So all of this has been organic. And when did you go on to the United States? Well, we started really growing in 2022. This essentially happened with a TikTok video. We had a random user post a video on TikTok of them scanning products and That's when our mark in the U.S. really was exponential. We launched actually back in 2017 in France, and then we shortly launched to many other countries. We are a French app. There are three co-founders who are French. And today, the president and CEO of Yooka, Julie Chapon, is here in the United States with myself, and that's where we currently, in New York City, developed the app.
[00:04:17] Melissa Traverse: And can you tell us anything about the user base of Yooka in terms of what the demographics look like? Where do people live? Is there a certain age range? Is there a certain salary bracket? What can you tell us about the folks who are using the app in the United States?
[00:04:32] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Since we're 25 million, we have a good idea of who our users are. We don't track all of this information because The point of our app is not to track consumer data, and we don't do that. But I can give you a little bit of context to begin with. In France, the way we saw the app develop is that the first people using the apps were usually pregnant mothers because they really wanted to make sure that what they were consuming and what they were putting on their body was healthy and was healthy for their baby. And then as they became mothers, they would use the app more and more. But then as the app grew in France, we've had more and more people of all ages using the app. It's quite different in the US. We actually have a quite younger audience using the app. I would say that 30% of our user base is between the ages of 18 and 25. And then it goes down a little bit as we go up. in age, but it is pretty consistent with our users in France, where between 18 and 35 is our biggest portion of our users. In terms of cities, I can start with states. Firstly, California is our biggest state, then Florida, and then Texas, which was a little bit surprising to us. In terms of cities, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and also Dallas, and Austin, and places sort of everywhere in the United States. I think Illinois even, the state is six or seven on our list of top states. We are quite spread out and it's really interesting to see that we are getting quite a wide range of people.
[00:06:05] Melissa Traverse: It's so interesting to me to hear that young demographic, 18 to 24. I mean, I assumed that it would be moms between 30 and 50 or whatever it is, but was that surprising to you? What does that say?
[00:06:24] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Yeah, well, those are demographics today. I can definitely say that those were our demographics at some point, especially at the start of our app. For me, it just means that these are the people in the US who are most on their phones. And since we reach such a large audience, it's not surprising that we're starting to reach a demographic similar to phone usage, for example.
[00:06:45] Melissa Traverse: I also want to call it the fact that Yuka doesn't share data from its users. You know, you were talking about data collection. When I first started looking into the app, I completely assumed that in addition to all of the kind of nutritional scoring, I assumed that it was also about data collection. Can you explain your stance on that?
[00:07:06] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: So we are completely independent, meaning that 100% of our financing comes solely from our premium users. So we're an independent project, meaning that we don't get any money from brands or manufacturers. We don't collect our user data. We don't sell our user data. The goal of this is that we really want to make sure that our scoring and our app is trustworthy and that there is no bias attached to any of it. We are also in France registered as a mission-driven company. It's more or less equivalent to B Corp in the United States. We're not a nonprofit, but our goal of our company is not financial gains. Financial gains is a means to continue developing our app, but that's not our number one goal. And it's pretty obvious in the way we do our pricing, even for our premium members. So the app is completely free. So all the core features are free. You're never going to be asked to pay to continue using the app to continue scanning. But if you really do love the app, you can give it's a donation based model. So it starts at $10 a year and you can give $10 a year to get access to a few other features, which is quite low compared to other apps on the market today. And you get features like You can search up products, which is useful for people who do a lot of online shopping, or you can also have an offline mode. So let's say you're in the grocery store and there's no internet or cellular data, it's really useful for those moments. And you can also set up food preferences. So if you're gluten-free, vegetarian, and there's a whole other list of food preferences that you can tag and flag and turn on, so that when you're scanning food, you directly get a tag to see if Hey, this, this food I can eat this. I'm going to, I'm gluten free, so I don't want to have gluten. So that's our business model today. And, and we really are impact driven. It's it's the number one priority in our mission today.
[00:08:57] Melissa Traverse: The most noticeable difference that I found between the paid version and the unpaid version is that the unpaid version, you can scan a barcode, but you must be paid in order to look up a product that you're interested in. Gabriella, what portion of Yooka customers are using the paid version versus the free version?
[00:09:19] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: So of our 25 million users in the United States, 2% of them today are premium users.
[00:09:27] Melissa Traverse: So that means that the majority of consumers are using the app at shelf.
[00:09:34] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Absolutely. And the majority of our users use it in the grocery store. So we, again, don't track. where people are using our app and in what locations they're using their app. But we did conduct an impact study two years ago of 25 million of our users. And we found that 80% of our users use Yooka in the grocery store and about 20% use it at home. When you first download the app, for example, the first thing people do is that they scan the entire contents of their refrigerators, of their pantry. So that's when people use it the most at home. And then the recurrent in the grocery store is where they use it the most. And even here in New York City, I see so many people when I'm doing my grocery store shopping or cosmetic shopping, I'll see a lot of people pull out their phone and scan.
[00:10:28] Melissa Traverse: And because you don't track data, I don't know what kind of information you'll have on this, but do you have any idea which retailers, consumers are using Yooka at the most? I think you mentioned earlier that as of right now, you don't have any official retailer partnerships. Is there any way we can tell where consumers are using the app when they're out shopping?
[00:10:51] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Unfortunately, we can't. But we do know which products are being scanned the most by our users. And to tell you a little bit about that, it's exactly what you think it would be. It's exactly the most common products that you see on shelves today. A few that I can think of top of mind are Monster Energy drink is quite up there, the zero sugar one. Kirkland brand, so Costco's brand, protein bars, Chobani Greek yogurts. Anything that's sort of trending today in food is what you'll see, or what we see at least, as being the most scanned.
[00:11:26] Melissa Traverse: And can you tell whether consumers are, let's say they scan that monster energy and they don't like what they see, is there any way for us to be able to understand whether they're just putting it back and not having an energy drink or are they putting it back and trading it for something else?
[00:11:43] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: So that is something we really wanted to understand when we conducted our impact study for our users to really understand their behaviors and if they changed while using Yooka. So of the 25,000 of our users that we surveyed, 94% of them said that they put back products when they have a red rating in the app. So they're rated poorly under 24 points. And 92% of our users actually say that they've reduced their consumption of ultra processed foods. And 66% say that always or often they choose alternative products that are recommended to them directly in the Yooka app. And the last stat that I really love is that 83% of our users find that they're buying more and more organic products.
[00:12:28] Melissa Traverse: So I have seen the reaction of Yuca when you scan something, it has a negative score and it presents you with another alternative that has a better score on it. How do those suggested products pop up? How are they selected to be shown as a good alternative?
[00:12:48] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Yeah, it's actually really simple. So once again, we are fully independent. So no app is going to pay to have their product being recommended to our users. However, let's say you scan poorly rated chips, you will get the best rated chips in that category. and many options of them, but that are also the most common because our goal is also to make our alternatives accessible to our users. We're not going to push some obscure, barely seen pack of chips that are well rated. We are really going to pick the most popular option with the best score.
[00:13:24] Melissa Traverse: And when you say most popular option, does that correlate to how many times consumers are scoring it with the app or is it some other metric?
[00:13:34] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: It's as simple as how many people have been scanning that product.
[00:13:38] Melissa Traverse: All right, let's get into the scoring system itself a little bit. And, you know, certainly ultra processed foods and the fact that consumers and retailers and brands are working towards reducing them as much as possible has been a very common topic of interest across Nosh and BevNET. You know, it really is interesting to hear how different organizations treat some of these ingredients. So let's start off with kind of an overall explanation of how the scoring system works. What makes that score up?
[00:14:12] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Our scoring system for food is based on three different criteria. The first one is nutrition, and the nutrition criteria is directly based off of the NutriScore. The NutriScore is a scientifically recognized scoring system adopted by seven European countries and also supported by an agency in the WHO, the International Agency for Cancer Research. and it scores products based on the mix of their macronutrients. So there are different variables that are put together to create the perfect balance of nutrition. So this includes saturated fats, sugars, sodium, proteins, fiber, and the fruit and vegetable content. So that balance and that mix of macronutrients is what is scored for the nutritional side, then 30% of the score is based on the additives present. And the additives are given four different levels of risk, high risk, moderate risk, low risk, and no risk. And each level of risk does decrease the score a little bit. So obviously, high risk has a higher decrease in the score than something that is of low risk. And that is 30% of the score. The level of risk is benchmarked by our scientific team. Internally, we have a toxicologist and a food nutrition engineer, as well as external scientific consultants who look at many different scientific criteria. So they're going to look at international health organizations and institutions and all the literature and data that they have put out. And they will also look at independent scientific literature. And that independent scientific literature is classified by a system of whether or not it's scientifically rigorous. And something else to note with the way we score additives is that it's constantly updated by our scientific team based on what research has developed. So today an additive might be rated like this, but tomorrow if there's new information about it and new literature that is scientifically accepted, then we will incorporate it into the app. And then 10% of our score is on the organic component. So is the product USDA organic or not? And the reason for this is that organic foods avoid chemical pesticides. And there's many other health reasons associated with organic diets, one of them being is that organic foods have 20% to 70% more antioxidants in them than non-organic foods and so on. So the levels of risk of additives are benchmarked by our scientific team that consists of a toxicologist, a food nutrition engineer, and external scientific consultants, and they will associated level of risk to their additives based on many different scientific criteria, one of them being information from international institutions and health agencies, think the FDA, think EFSA, which is the equivalent of the FDA in Europe, and many other international health agencies like the WHO, but also independent scientific studies, And that is classified on a level of scientific rigor, whether or not it's robust or not will be determined by our scientific team. And then 10% of our score or 10 points of our score is based on whether or not a product is organic or USDA organic in the United States. The reason for this is that USDA organic foods avoid chemical pesticides. And there's a whole plethora of other reasons why an organic diet is better for you. One of them being is that there is more antioxidants in organic foods 20 to 70%. And there's a whole list of other reasons why an organic diet is a lot healthier for you.
[00:18:11] Melissa Traverse: There's so much documentation on the UCA website. If anybody out there wanted to read any of the studies that back, for example, the organic component, can people find those right on the UCA website?
[00:18:25] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Absolutely. Even just our additives and why we rate our additives in that way, every single one of the sources we use can be found by our users. And for the organic question, yes, you can absolutely see why we rate organic foods an extra 10%. We actually also wrote an entire article on it with all our sources that we've used. And If you are subscribed to our app and you have the app in our phone, you can join our newsletters where you will constantly get blog articles about organic foods and why the diet is better, certain articles about additives, ultra processed foods. There's so many topics that we cover really in depth.
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[00:19:57] Melissa Traverse: In some of the information that you sent over, I think I read that if on a product that there is a high risk or red colored additive, the max score for the product itself is a 49 out of 100. Is that right?
[00:20:13] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Yes, so essentially that if a product has one single red additive, so a high risk additive, the maximum score it can get is 49 out of 100. So it's a little different than the 30% that I just talked about. The reason for this is that we never want to recommend a product with additives that have a certain level of risk. And to explain a little bit how an additive is classified as high risk on our app, the only way it will be classified as high risk is if it follows three certain criteria. The first one is, does it have serious health effects? And this is not just allergens or irritants within the additive itself. It's effects linked to carcinogenic risks, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and so on. And then the second criteria, which goes hand in hand with the first criteria is, is there a high level of evidence? Is there a link between this additive and at least one of the serious health effects that is hypothesized. And then the third criteria is the estimated exposure of concern. So this essentially means that does the exposure of this additive exceed levels of concern today, or are the levels of concern studies achievable every day through daily food in the population? And an additive that I could give you that exemplifies the third criteria would be phosphate additives. Phosphate additives in our app are high risk. And the reason for that is that today we have an excess of, we eat an excess of phosphorus in our diets, which can pose great risks to our kidney health, and bone mineralization and is quite dangerous for people who have kidney disease also, where also a large part of the population doesn't even know that they have kidney disease. So that's part of the reason why it's high risk. So you'll see in our app, an additive with a red, you'll know that it's not high risk for no reason.
[00:22:15] Melissa Traverse: I'm glad you mentioned that one example. And I wanted to have you explain some of the other ingredients in their ratings. So the first one that I was curious about was sweeteners. You know, certainly when you think about sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose, you know, those are oftentimes banned from retailers and considered artificial. But where do we stand with sweeteners like stevia, allulose, monk fruit, even something like erythritol? Where does Yuca stand on those?
[00:22:49] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and Ace K and sucralose, which we have all heard of and have been on the market for a really long time, there is substantial evidence and substantial research that backs that these additives do pose health risks. Even aspartame, for example, is classified as having carcinogenic risk. So that is the reason why those additives today are red. For others, artificial sweeteners such as Stevial or even newer ones like erythritol or allulose and monk fruit, those are all given levels of risk. So Stevial is today in our app given a level of risk as having low risk. This is solely based on the research that we have available today. Because it is so new, we cannot say whether or not health risks are of great concern. That's the case for erythritol, although we did pass erythritol to moderate risk. It's an orange additive today based on new scientific study that came out. So what I can say about the other ones is that New additives can be low risk and can remain low risk, but as research develops, we will always be updating our app. So it doesn't mean that today's TBL might be low risk. It doesn't mean that tomorrow new research might point to adverse health risks, and we might update it to give a higher level of risks, for example.
[00:24:14] Melissa Traverse: What about something like honey or maple syrup? Are there any demerits because these are added sugars or do they rank differently because they're unprocessed?
[00:24:26] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Yeah, those will be directly calculated. They won't be calculated as an additive like artificial sweeteners or like natural sweeteners. They'll be classified as the sugar score in the NutriScore component, so 60% of our score. So if there's a lot of honey in a food and the sugar content is really high, that product won't get a good rating on the nutritional side.
[00:24:49] Melissa Traverse: I just think this is so fascinating to hear where kind of everybody falls on some of these core ingredients. What if we took the rating of something like white sugar versus aspartame? How do those two score in relation to each other?
[00:25:04] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Yeah, so aspartame won't move the clock on our nutritional side of our rating because it's an additive. It will be measured separately, and it will be given a high level of risk in the additive points. For something like white sugar, we count all sugar as being the same because the way the NutriScore today is set up is that sugars are processed in your body and those will contribute to your glucose levels in your system, the same whether it's cane sugar or white sugar or brown sugar.
[00:25:37] Melissa Traverse: So another ingredient I'm very interested to hear about are processed oils and oftentimes when we're talking about processed oils, we're also talking about seed oils. Where does yucca stand on that category?
[00:25:50] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Already in our nutrition score, we do calculate the amount of saturated fats in foods, so that will be negatively impacting the score. Today in our app, we flag two types of processed oils, and those will be flagged, and you will know that they will be flagged directly if you scan a product with these oils in them. and they are partially hydrogenated and hydrogenated oils. They include the processed seed oils that you've been talking about and the reason for that is that both partially hydrogenated and hydrogenated oils do risk creating trans fat and trans fat today do contribute to cardiovascular risks. The WHO recommends keeping trans fat at zero due to its effects on your cardiovascular system. So we are very excited that we've been able to incorporate that into our app.
[00:26:47] Melissa Traverse: So just to make sure I understand, so if we were going to take something like canola oil or soybean oil and compare it to extra virgin olive oil, how would those two affect a brand's UCA score?
[00:26:58] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: So if those oils are unprocessed, so if the canola oil is not hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated, it won't affect the score. It might even be better than some other oils that are higher in saturated fats because today polyunsaturated oils like unprocessed canola oil, for example, is considered beneficial to your health.
[00:27:24] Melissa Traverse: And because you have so much data from France, I'm just curious, how do French people think about seed oils or processed oils versus things like extra virgin olive oil, butter, that kind of thing?
[00:27:40] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Well, not all seed oils are processed. And I think that's where the biggest misconception in the United States come from. Like the US, France does recommend certain seed oils like canola oil for heart health because it does lower the bad cholesterol. So the trend of avoiding processed seed oils has been ramping up in the US. We haven't seen it in France, perhaps because as a whole, there are less ultra-processed foods in France, although there are a lot. But in the US today, 70% of the offerings in the supermarket are ultra-processed. So it makes sense that people are targeting foods that have indicators as being ultra processed.
[00:28:22] Melissa Traverse: And of course, if anybody has any questions about any of that, you can go to Yuka's website and see lots of data there. How about natural flavors?
[00:28:31] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Today we rank natural flavor as low risk. That's because the FDA has certain benchmarks of what can be included in natural flavoring. It's usually derived of spices and fruits and vegetables and things like that. Now, we do understand people's concern with natural flavors as we don't have full transparency on exactly what's inside. And we actually came out with a study about a month ago in collaboration with Harvard Law School, where we measured 800 grocery store offerings across 12 different categories to compare price to quality. And what we found out was that the lowest priced foods are the worst in quality. They have higher levels of additives, higher levels of sodium, and higher levels of sugar. And a major part, actually, of this study was that we were giving policy recommendation to the FDA, but also to the United States government as a whole. And one of our recommendations was to make flavorings and natural flavors, as well as artificial flavors, more transparent so that On an ingredient list, consumers can feel more at ease in what they're eating.
[00:29:46] Melissa Traverse: And this certainly all coincides with the Maha movement. Does Yuko work in tandem with the U.S. government on any of the scoring metrics, how it processes the data, anything like that?
[00:30:01] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Yeah, so today we are completely independent from brands, but we are also completely independent from political parties and politics as a whole. We're not affiliated in any way with the Maha movement, but we haven't been asked of any of any aid, but we are open to giving our database absolutely for free to the U.S. government if they decide one day to ask us for help on measuring foods or measuring levels of processed foods. Absolutely, that's something we can help with.
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[00:30:51] Melissa Traverse: All right, I have another ingredient question for you. Where does Yuca stand on gums and thickeners, things like xanthan gum, guar gum, but also emulsifiers like carrageenan?
[00:31:04] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Depending on the gum, it has a different level of risk. As mentioned on my whole spiel about additives and how our scientific team rates them, each one of those gums has their own level of risk. Guar gum, sassine gum, they're all considered low risk based on the available data and their effects in those research studies today. Cellulose gum is high risk. Carrageenan is high risk also. Carrageenan, I believe, has shown effects and has been suspected of contributing to breast cancer. But as long as there's no measurable health concern, no high level of evidence, no serious health concerns that have been proven, and If exposure is not a concern, we're not going to rate an additive as being riskier than it should be.
[00:32:00] Melissa Traverse: And another question I have is around preservatives. It can be really hard to find preservatives that are natural but also extend the shelf life of a product to the extent where it needs to be for the whole product to make sense. So I know that preservatives like propylparaben and dipotassium phosphate are high risk, but where do, are there any other preservatives that are lower risk and what are some of the other options that you're seeing brands use for preservatives if they are trying to avoid something that's high risk?
[00:32:37] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: There are definitely more natural, and natural doesn't always mean better, but there are also lower risk preservatives. There are so many different additives that can be used. There are so many different ingredients. The advice that I can give is to limit additive use as much as possible, because the more additives a manufacturer or brand is going to use, most likely the higher level of processing that food is going to have. And whether or not the product can be rated healthy or not it's never gonna be as good as a product in its more real food form, let's just say.
[00:33:12] Melissa Traverse: And are there any preservatives that you're seeing as natural alternatives? I mean, the two that I think of first are probably citric acid and rosemary extract. I'm just thinking for all of the brands out there, maybe they're formulating, maybe they're reformulating, but what are some preservatives you're seeing being used effectively that are low risk?
[00:33:32] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: I can definitely say is that we get hundreds of emails constantly. And honestly, we get emails every single day from brands reaching out to us, asking how they can better their products and what they can change in their products to make them their products healthier, but also to improve their UCLIS scores. And what we do that's great, and that is completely free, is that we offer a simulation tool for brands to use so that they can play around with the ingredients in their products, or if they want to reformulate, or if they want to come out with brand new products, they can use the simulation tool for free and see how their product scores and what needs to be removed or added to improve the score.
[00:34:12] Melissa Traverse: So I saw MSG, that is high risk, is that right? Yes. There's been some controversy around MSG and, you know, we hear that it's sort of like a mix of bad science and, you know, xenophobia that MSG has been classified as this very risky, you know, sort of form of sodium. As far as I understand, organizations like the FDA have found it to be safe for general consumption. But how does MSG fall into the UKA scoring?
[00:34:46] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Yeah, so we rate MSG as being high risk mainly due to its links and suspected links to cardiovascular risks. There's many other risks associated with MSG. What I can speak about the level of proof and the level of evidence, it's all in our app. We have so many studies that point to why MSG is high risk and why it should be avoided in food. To talk about the FDA, MSG today is actually considered generally recognized as safe. It's this umbrella term that the FDA has used to, it was originally used for salt and pepper where companies didn't have to go through an approval process to get things that are generally recognized as safe, like salt and pepper, onto the market. Unfortunately, companies have used this as a loophole to push a lot of additives that are not really verified or very much regulated today in the United States. And approved under this umbrella term is generally recognized as safe, essentially. The main difference between or that we've seen between France and the US is that In the US, an additive will be put on the market and will be only removed if it's deemed as being unsafe. So if there is adverse health effects in the general population. However, France and Europe follows the precautionary principle, meaning that an additive can only be put on the market if it's deemed and proven as being safe.
[00:36:13] Melissa Traverse: So there are brands like Welch's, Chobani, Activia, showing how they are removing things like artificial dyes, preservatives, emulsifiers. What are brands changing some of these things out for? Because these are major brands. What are some of the most interesting trade-offs you've seen?
[00:36:34] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Well, what I've seen is that they're just removing these additives altogether. I think we hear a lot about artificial dyes being removed and it's great because they are high risk additives. They do pose many different health risks. I think what's interesting to note is that that's not the only additive that manufacturers are removing today. And artificial dyes are just a tip of the iceberg in terms of additives that should be off our products and off our shelves today. From what I've seen, let's say Chobani removing phosphate additives, they've been just removing the additives. They haven't been replacing it with anything, which is great because they are reducing the amount of process and additives that is going into their product as a whole. The same for Skittles. Skittles removed titanium dioxide, which is a whitening agent. I believe it was the The color that wrote the S on the Skittles, they have yet to remove the other artificial dyes, but they aren't replacing it from what I'm seeing with anything else.
[00:37:33] Melissa Traverse: And are you tracking these changes to Yooka, or how are you tracking those changes to the app?
[00:37:41] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: So we actually have a food database of four million products, which is immense. And we have so much data on the product from today, from a year ago, from two years ago, from three years ago. So we have this immense capability to see the changes of our products every day. And let's say a product gets reformulated and our app shows the old version. Well, our users Almost within 24 hours, we'll scan the new products, see that there's a difference, and send us a photo of the new composition. So we're constantly updating every product. And because of that, we've kept a list for ourselves to track what is being reformulated today.
[00:38:21] Melissa Traverse: And if a brand looks up their score, they look up their listing and sees that something is incorrect, what's the process that they go through in order to fix it?
[00:38:30] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: So they can send an email at brands at yucca.io and they can send us any information they want about their products and we will fix it within 48 hours, and we'll respond to them within 48 hours. And what's great is that it's not only for fixing products. If they have any question about their products, they can email us. Or if they have new products coming out and they want to make sure that it's on the app so that when people see it in store, they can immediately scan it, well, they can send us the product beforehand. And if they tell us the date that they want us to publish it, we can do that too.
[00:39:02] Melissa Traverse: And what was that email address?
[00:39:04] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: brands at yuka.io.
[00:39:07] Melissa Traverse: And what if I go to scan a brand and nothing shows up at all? How do you get entered into the system?
[00:39:14] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: It's a really quick process. You'll be invited to take a photo of the product, take a photo of the ingredient list, and to take a photo of the nutritional information. And it will be uploaded and automatically processed on the spot. If there's ever an issue with the way it's being processed, it gets sent to our internal team, which are real people who make sure that everything is correct and that everything is verified correctly. And you'll see the score pop up in the app almost immediately. The good news is that that should happen really rarely today. Our users say that 90% of products that they scan at grocery stores are already on the app.
[00:39:52] Melissa Traverse: Real people, that's becoming increasingly, increasingly rare. You had mentioned that on the app, a brand can be called out if they have a low score. Can you explain what that means and how it works?
[00:40:06] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: So we launched in November of 2024, a feature called Call Out Brands. And this feature was inspired with part of our ethos of our brand. So the main mission is to render food as transparent and health information as transparent as possible to consumers. But the second part of our mission is to push manufacturers to reformulate for the better. And in order to accelerate that process, because we believe that regulation is slow and not fast enough for consumers' needs, we decided to create a feature called Callout Brands. And basically, when you scan a product, a food product with a high-risk additive, so red-labeled additives, you can then click a button called call out the brand, and it will invite you to either send an email to the brand or to post on social media. So you can do so on Instagram, on X, and on LinkedIn. And what the message says is that it says, hello, at the brand, this product that I've scanned contains this high risk additive or these high risk additives. Please remove it in order to protect consumer health. And so far to date, we've had over 1 million call outs to so many different brands. And it's amazing to see how many people are really engaging in this sort of social mission towards improving our products.
[00:41:34] Melissa Traverse: And the forums that those messages show up, is it LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook? What are the forums?
[00:41:44] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: Yes, so you can post on the last post of Instagram, so it's going to be directly on Instagram comments. It's going to be on X on your own profile, and it's going to be on the brand's LinkedIn page. as a comment.
[00:41:57] Melissa Traverse: If a brand is out there and they have a score that they would like to improve, do you have any tips for how they can make some of those ingredient switches in a way that doesn't cost them more money on their cost of goods, it doesn't decrease the shelf life immensely, and it leaves the product still tasting really good?
[00:42:21] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: The main thing to pull out of this question is that Brands should protect consumer health. That should be their number one priority. And cost and shelf life and adding additives to enhance the flavor, enhance the attractability of the product should not be taken into account. We've done a few studies in our own data in all of our countries to see additive prevalence. So for example, we measured additive averages per category of products across different countries. And what we saw is that the United States had considerably more additives through every single one of their categories compared to European countries. And I'll give you an example. Store Bought Bread had an average of six additives per product. France only has about two additives for a product in their bread. And Italy, it's closer to one. So what does that say? That says that brands should really start reformulating towards making their foods back to what they were before, as in real whole foods. And when brands ask us how they can reformulate to make foods taste better or to not get rid of what people love, I think the real question is that In the United States, at least with the prevalence of ultra-processed foods, people have forgotten what real foods taste like, have forgotten what real colors are. No kid should look at a cereal and think that colored cereal is the norm. So I think that we're formulating towards making products less ultra-processed is key. you know, it's not going to affect the taste. I can strongly and confidently say that food in France and in Europe, which with a lot less additives, tastes a lot less better than food in the US. So my advice would be reformulate towards real food and try your best to protect consumer health because UCA scores and people are paying attention to what they're buying. And if they don't reformulate and make their offerings better, they're going to end up losing sales in the long run.
[00:44:31] Melissa Traverse: When you say it like that, it sounds so simple. I mean, certainly, I think most people who are listening to this would agree that something has to change in the United States' food system. My last question for you is, how do you and the YUCA team define YUCA? Is it a tool for consumers to help them be able to choose healthier products and consume healthier products? Or is it something to reshape the food system?
[00:44:59] Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad: I think it's both. I think on the food side, the main takeaway is that we want to teach people that there's always a better option. We're not trying to tell consumers to stop eating the foods that they love. We're trying to tell them that there's always a healthier alternative out there. Your bag of chips, there is something better. There is something less processed. There is something that is healthier for you. And we're teaching people how to decipher these ingredients and these foods, hopefully without using us one day. And the second part of our mission, which I believe is just as important as giving health transparency to consumers, is pushing brands towards reformulation. One of our mottos is that we hope that in 10 years from now, hopefully sooner, maybe perhaps more, that people can just go into a grocery store and will never need to use yucca because all the offerings are healthy and good.
[00:45:53] Melissa Traverse: Gabriella Sabag-Weingrad you so much for joining us from Yucca to tell us all about the app and what you've learned so far. For everybody else out there listening to the Non-Based Podcast, thank you so much for joining me and we will see you next time.
