America’s biggest nonalcoholic beverage companies will add ingredient safety data to drink packaging QR code links, giving consumers access to more information about the contents of their products.
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The initiative is led by the American Beverage Association, the trade group that represents major drinks companies including Keurig Dr Pepper, PepsiCo and The Coca-Cola Co. In a rare show of unity, these companies that usually compete with one another are working together on the effort.
Participating brands include Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper, Celsius, Monster Energy, Polar Beverages and Red Bull.
Consumers who scan the QR codes will have the option of opening GoodToKnowFacts.org, a website launched by the ABA last year, which contains information about more than 140 ingredients commonly found in packaged beverages.
For each ingredient, the site lists a short description, other foods or beverages that use it, and whether it is authorized for use by food safety regulators, including the Food and Drug Administration, the European Food Safety Authority, and Health Canada.
Pepsi has already linked its beverage QR codes to the website. Coca-Cola is expected to complete its rollout this month, and Keurig Dr Pepper is expected to add the feature later this year.
The rollout comes as the Trump administration’s top health officials have called for greater transparency around food ingredient safety and less reliance on the food industry to self-regulate.
At the same time, American consumers are focusing more on the relationship between food and health. A recent EY survey found that 6 in 10 consumers pay attention to ingredients when choosing beverages.
The growing interest in ingredients has helped fuel the popularity of nutrition apps such as Yuka, Bobby Approved and Zoe, which let users scan a product’s barcode to see a health score. Many popular soft drinks receive low scores on the apps, often because of high sugar content and additives such as food coloring, preservatives and sweeteners.
About a quarter of Americans now use nutrition apps, and 63% of users say they trust the data from those apps as much as information from the brands themselves, according to data from NIQ.
This campaign by the trade and lobbying group that represents big beverage makers is largely a response to this shift in consumer behavior.
“There’s an opportunity here for us to bring that information to them, not have it, you know, buried across the internet and different websites,” said Merideth Potter, chief strategy officer at ABA.
Chris Costagli, food and beverage thought leader at NIQ, said consumers’ increasing use of third party nutrition tools suggests a trust gap with food brands and a desire for simpler, more independent guidance.
Industry-funded ingredient information efforts can help “put a little bit more control in the manufacturer’s hands to own that narrative with shoppers.”
Potter noted that the information on the website is not the industry’s own conclusions. “We don’t decide what’s safe,” she said, it’s the “experts who reside in those food safety agencies who make these safety determinations.”
But Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, cautioned that some government reviews are “outdated” and often decades old.
He pointed out that the ABA’s GoodToKnowFacts website does not include newer studies that have raised concerns about certain ingredients. He advised consumers to seek information from “trusted sites that are not funded by industry.”
A spokesperson for the American Beverage Association said the website includes information from regulating agencies in the U.S., Europe and Canada whose role it is to review available science, including new research, on ingredient safety.
