The highly successful Yuka application has a name that refers to a Mexican region.
How do you measure the success of a product? No doubt the way his name penetrates everyday language. The game Doom gave the kind of doom-like. We hear that we are going to “Googling” information on the net. And, in the case of the Yuka application, which specializes in evaluating the quality of food and cosmetics, it is referred to when speaking of the “chemical Yuka” or the “Carbon Yuka”.
For those who do not yet know Yuka, even if only by name, this is a mobile application that rates agri-food products and beauty products via a color-coded system providing the score. obtained (dark green: excellent; light green: good; orange: poor; and red: poor). Yuka details the composition of the products and the health risks.
Wink to Mexico
This name, precisely, was not chosen at random. In the company’s help pages, we learn that it is in fact the diminutive of Yucatán, the name of a Mexican state located in the south of the country, on the Atlantic coast. One syllable less and one letter c transformed into k later, Yucatán became Yuka. Why a c rather than a k? The company does not specify.
What is told, however, is the reason why Yuka refers to Mexico. It turns out that the wife of one of the three founders comes from this region. And it is perhaps this one who pointed out that Yuca, written thus, means cassava in Spanish – moreover, Yucca, with two c, is a genus of plants that one also finds in Central America and various other warm regions.
The reliability of an application like Yuka is a recurring topic, since ratings are based on interpretations. In addition, criticism has been leveled at the way in which the evaluation is carried out, in particular on the importance of certain criteria compared to others, while they do not necessarily have the same importance or that they do not. are not based on the same state of scientific knowledge.
Conversely, supporters of the application consider that this kind of application, as imperfect as they are, are likely to trigger a virtuous circle, a bit like Nutri-Score. People can be encouraged to switch to higher rated products, thereby prompting the industry to review their composition so as not to lose market share.
