These Are the ‘Healthiest’ Brands in the US

New York—Market research firm YouGov has released its annual rankings of the brands consumers trust and would recommend to others.

London-based YouGov publishes lists throughout the year of how brands rate among consumers in markets worldwide, ranking them according to “health” or “buzz,” or how they stack up among members of certain demographic groups.

In the United States, the company says it interviews thousands of consumers every day from a representative U.S. population sample, drawing from an online group of consumers of more than 1.8 million adults, ages 18 and up.

Respondents rate brands from 100 (very positive) to -100 (very negative) in a number of areas, including satisfaction, quality and if they would recommend to others. The brand’s ranking is calculated by subtracting negative feedback from positive; a zero score would mean equal amounts of both.

For the 2019 U.S. Brand Health Rankings, YouGov took the average score for all 1,740 brands in its BrandIndex for the 12-month period from July 1, 2018-June 30, 2019.

For the third year in a row, Johnson & Johnson-owned Band-Aid came out on top, followed by: Procter & Gamble’s Dawn, which moved from No. 3 to No. 2; Hershey’s, which also moved ahead one spot; Mars Inc.-owned M&M’s, which jumped ahead four places to No. 4; and Netflix, which moved up two spots to take the No. 5 slot.   

Netflix was the only brand to crack the top five that was neither a food nor a consumer good and its index score of 46.2 was nearly double that of its biggest competitors, Amazon Video (24.3) and Hulu (23.5).

Rounding out the top 10 were Clorox, another P&G company, in the No. 6 spot, then Unilever’s Dove, PepsiCo-owned Quaker, Samsung and Pillsbury, a General Mills brand.

The top “Index Improvers” for 2019, meaning the brands whose scores improved the most year-over-year, were United Airlines followed by: Equifax—which is interesting given all the chatter over the company’s data breach settlement payout—at No. 2; Amazon-owned video doorbell system Ring; Sanofi Consumer Healthcare’s heartburn medicine Zantac;  and Airborne, which is owned by British company Reckitt Benckiser.

YouGov also sorts its results by industry.

While there is no breakout for fine jewelry or even accessories brands, there are a few categories that might be of interest to the industry.

In the “Internet Social Media” category, U.S. consumers polled ranked YouTube tops, with an