A Diet Quality Score That Looks Beyond Calories

What is a diet quality score?

A diet quality score evaluates the pattern of foods in a diet, not only its calorie total. Two days can contain the same number of calories and still differ meaningfully in vegetables, whole grains, healthy fats, added sugar, and sodium.

The Alma Score turns that pattern into one daily number from 0 to 100. It gives you a readable answer to a broader question than a calorie target can: What was the quality of my diet today?

How is the Alma Score built?

The Alma Score adapts Harvard's Alternate Healthy Eating Index into a score you can see while logging meals. It rewards patterns associated with higher diet quality:

• Foods that raise the score: vegetables, fruit, whole grains, nuts and legumes, omega-3s, and healthy fats.
• Foods that lower the score: processed meat, added sugar, sodium, and alcohol.

Alma applies this framework to your daily food log. The score updates as you add meals, helping you see the pattern without turning every food choice into a pass or fail.

Why is diet quality different from calories and macros?

Calories describe how much energy food provides. Macros describe how that energy is split among protein, carbohydrate, and fat. Neither measure fully describes the foods those numbers came from.

A day built around vegetables, fruit, beans, whole grains, fish, and unsaturated fats can land at the same calorie total as a day high in refined grains, added sugar, sodium, and processed meat. The Alma Score makes that difference visible while Alma still tracks calories, macros, and 25+ micronutrients.

For more context, read Alma's guides to micronutrients and high-fiber foods.

Who is a diet quality score useful for?

The Alma Score is useful when calories alone do not answer your question. It can help people who want to understand the overall pattern of their meals, compare days without chasing perfection, or get one clear signal from a detailed nutrition log.

It is not a diagnosis or a grade on your worth. One meal does not define a diet. The useful signal is the pattern and the practical next step, such as adding fruit, choosing a whole grain, or including nuts, legumes, fish, or another source of healthy fat.

What nutrition research can you explore next?

The food categories behind diet quality also appear in several well-studied eating patterns. Explore Alma's research summaries on the Mediterranean diet, the DASH diet, and ultra-processed foods and cardiovascular health.

These summaries provide research context. The Alma Score itself is a product feature based on the AHEI framework and does not imply endorsement by Harvard.