Good vs. Bad Health Footprint Labels

Good health footprint labels use leading experts to evaluate companies’ impact on important determinants of human health. They apply empirical and intellectual rigor to assess impact reliably. They listen to affected communities. They lack financial ties to the companies they rate. They hold companies accountable through audits. They remain accountable in themselves. They aggregate assessments in ways that make sense to users. They create user-friendly labeling information. They repeat and update this process regularly.

Bad health footprint labels don’t. 

All health footprint labels claim to promote health. There is nothing preventing a health footprint label from being non-expert based, indifferent to community concerns, or commercially interested. A bad health footprint label can be arbitrary, biased, or deliberately misleading.

How to tell good health footprint labels from bad ones?