Nutrient profiling is the scientific method of ranking or classifying foods according to their nutritional composition, producing scores or categories that distinguish healthier from less healthy options. Systems such as Nutri-Score, the UK’s Ofcom model, and Australia’s Health Star Rating combine “negative” components like energy, saturated fat, sugar, and sodium with “positive” ones like fibre, protein, fruit, and vegetable content into a single rating. Governments use these models to regulate advertising to children, set reformulation targets, and design front-of-pack labels; retailers and manufacturers use them to guide product development. The science is contested at the margins: cheese can score poorly despite its calcium, and some argue the models oversimplify. Still, validated profiling correlates reasonably with dietary quality and gives policymakers an evidence-based tool for nudging the food supply.