How Scout scores products
Every product on Scout gets one whole number from 1 to 100. Higher is healthier. The number is a judgment of the product within its category — a protein powder is held to the standard of protein powders, a sunscreen to sunscreens — built from three things you can check yourself: the ingredient list, how processed the product is and what it is packaged in. Credible lab results are shown next to the score as disclosure (Step 4). The same product carries the same score everywhere in Scout: rankings, barcode scan, photo scan and this website.
What the number means
- The top of the scale is whole-food, minimally processed, recognizable ingredients: no seed oils, no artificial dyes, no high-fructose corn syrup.
- The middle is a real product with real caveats — added sugar, moderate processing, a few acceptable additives.
- The bottom is ultra-processed formulas built on refined grain, seed oils, sugar or corn syrup and several artificial additives. Most mainstream packaged snacks and sodas live here.
- A score of 86 or higher earns the Scout Pick badge in the app.
Step 1 — Every ingredient, judged in context
Each product is scored against a framework written for its category: foods, beverages, bottled water, supplements, skin and hair care, oral care, deodorant, cleaning products, home essentials, water and air filtration, candles, cookware and clothing each have their own. A sweetener is weighed differently in an energy drink than in a protein bar; a preservative in a face cream is not the same question as one in a yogurt.
Every notable ingredient on the label is classified on a five-step scale, from clearly beneficial to clearly harmful, and shown on the product page as the Key ingredients list. The counts of beneficial ingredients and harmful substances come straight from that list. A proprietary blend is broken into its components, so a "flavor system" cannot hide what is in it.
Some rules are fixed, because the evidence is settled or because a consistent rule is fairer than a case-by-case call:
- Seed oils (soybean, canola, corn, cottonseed, sunflower, safflower, grapeseed, rice bran, rapeseed) are always flagged harmful in foods and drinks. In products you put on your skin or hair, plant oils are judged as skincare ingredients instead.
- Natural caffeine from coffee, tea, yerba mate, guarana or cacao is never penalized.
- Stevia in all its forms is treated as neutral — neither a plus nor a minus.
- Soy protein isolate in supplements, and the isolates and textured proteins that plant-based meats are built on, are flagged.
Step 2 — Processing
Scout separates simple, recognizable products from engineered ones. Where the NOVA processing group is published for a product, it caps the score: a NOVA 3 processed food tops out at 85 and a NOVA 4 ultra-processed food at 70, with room above the cap only for an exceptionally clean label. Supplements and energy drinks are NOVA 4 by construction, so the cap is not applied to them — it would compress the whole category instead of telling products apart. Scout never guesses a NOVA group; if none is published, the step is skipped.
Step 3 — Packaging
What a product is packaged in matters when the material touches what you eat, drink or absorb. Packaging type is detected separately from the ingredient analysis, and a fixed deduction table is applied in code — plastic, glass, metal, lined cans, bottled-water formats, steeping tea bags and similar cases each have a set value. The deduction only fires when the packaging was identified with confidence.
Step 4 — Lab results, recalls and documented conduct
Independent lab results are shown as disclosure, not as part of the score. A product page with a lab panel lists each contaminant with the measured amount and the limit Scout compares it to, so the reader sees the number rather than a verdict. The Lab tested label marks products whose results come from quantitative third-party work (Consumer Reports, EWG, Clean Label Project, Valisure, Mamavation, the Detox Project, regulatory action levels and independent laboratories, among others).
A few overlays are applied after scoring, in a fixed order: product-line consistency (the same formulation carries the same score across sizes and flavors), a cap for bottled-water brands with documented contamination, the Dirty Dozen produce advisory (shown, never scored), and a flat deduction for brands with documented ethical events. Heavy metals in cacao and process contaminants in snacks are disclosed rather than penalized.
Labels you will see next to a score
- Scout Pick — score of 86 or higher.
- Lab tested — quantitative third-party results are on file and shown on the page.
- Seed oil free / Contains seed oils — read directly from the analyzed ingredient list.
- Bioengineered — the label discloses bioengineered ingredients. Display only; it never moves the score.
- Parent-company grade — a letter for who owns the brand. Display only.
What Scout does not score
Alcohol, tobacco and nicotine products get no score — there is no healthy version to compare against. Scout also declines to score a photo it cannot identify as a product.
Independence and corrections
No brand pays for a score, a ranking position or a placement, and whether Scout earns a commission on a purchase never enters the scoring. Scores change only through a reviewed change to the method itself, and every such change is versioned so a stale score can be told apart from a current one. Each product page shows when its analysis was last updated. If you believe a score is wrong — a reformulated product, a mis-read label, a missing lab result — tell us; corrections are reviewed by Scout's research team and the page is updated, not quietly overwritten.