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I love Publix, but boy do I wish we had Kroger grocery stores down here in Florida. The grocery chain is piloting a program ranking the nutritional value of foods on their shelves on a scale from 1 to 100, with one being the lowest nutritional value and 100 being the highest. Admittedly, many of the food manufacturers are less than pleased with the ranking system – probably because they aren’t scoring very high. But the scores can help the consumer by processing the information found on the label for them. Read the excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article about this and similar ventures being launched by other grocery retailers.
“Myra Vanderpool for years regularly bought her local supermarket’s store-brand wheat bread. This spring, she switched brands.
What prompted Ms. Vanderpool’s move was a new nutritional-scoring system being tested at her Kroger Co. grocery store in Lexington, Ky., that ranks thousands of foods on a scale of 1 (low in nutrition) to 100 (really healthy). The results, posted next to items on the grocer’s shelf, were eye-opening: Her regular bread scored a 23, the same as Häagen-Dazs coffee ice cream.
So the 67-year-old substitute teacher started buying one of Nature’s Own wheat breads, which has a score of 81, partly because it contains more fiber and protein than her former brand. Ms. Vanderpool said her husband complains at times that he misses his old bread, but she tells him: “This is healthier for you.”
Kroger’s scoring system is part of a nationwide move by grocery retailers to get pushier about offering nutritional advice. Other chains, such as Hy-Vee Inc. in the Midwest, are hiring dietitians to advise shoppers on how to select healthier food and, in some stores, walk the aisles offering personalized recommendations for a fee. Some grocers, like Safeway Inc., are mining data gleaned from loyalty cards on their customers’ purchasing habits to recommend healthier alternatives to the foods they buy. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the country’s biggest food retailer, plans to announce details of its own “nutrition program” later this summer, said a spokeswoman, who declined to elaborate.
Supermarkets are hoping to increase their shoppers’ loyalty, and perhaps win back some customers who have turned for at least some of their purchases to specialty stores such as Whole Foods Market Inc. and big-box retailers like Wal-Mart. Sales of natural and organic foods jumped 72% to $31.9 billion in the five years ended 2009, while functional, or fortified, foods rose 44% to $37.3 billion in the same period, according to Nutrition Business Journal. And big food makers have been rolling out more options that are lower in salt and saturated fat and higher in fiber and whole grains.
“It’s not our responsibility to tell shoppers what to eat, what not to eat or how to eat,” said Ric Jurgens, chief executive of supermarket chain Hy-Vee. Still, “we need to provide them with as much information as we can, to help them make good decisions and provide as many options as possible.”
Some food makers object to their products being scored for nutrition. They say shoppers consider a variety of factors when buying food. And they say that relying on a single nutritional score can make it difficult for consumers to understand how the foods they buy fit into a diet. It also can result in surprises, like the wheat bread Ms. Vanderpool bought that scored the same as an ice cream. A spokesman for the nutritional-scoring system, called NuVal, said calcium and vitamin A boosted the ice cream’s score, while added sodium and low-fiber content hurt the bread’s ranking.
Kellogg Co.’s Kashi brand in a statement said it tries to provide minimally processed, organic-certified food free of artificial flavors and other additives. “Many of the current nutrient-profiling systems don’t take these values into account, which results in an incomplete picture,” it said.
Kroger, the second-largest food retailer by revenue after Wal-Mart, recently began testing the NuVal scoring system in some Kentucky stores and is considering using it nationally. The system, developed by health experts from Yale University and other institutions, uses nutrition data on food labels and other public information to calculate how well a product helps meet federal dietary recommendations. High levels of saturated fat, for example, can pull down the score while calcium can help raise it. Foods are ranked from 1 to 100; the higher the number, the greater the nutritional value.
The scores can influence shoppers’ choices. Ron Gill, a 44-year-old insurance salesman in Lexington, Ky., keeps an eye on the NuVal scores posted at his local Kroger store. On a recent shopping trip, in the processed-meat aisle, Mr. Gill passed up his usual Ball Park brand hotdogs, made by Sara Lee Corp., with a score of 7. Instead, he picked up Johnsonville Sausage LLC.’s smoked turkey sausage, which had a score of 10.
“It’s a little difference, going in the right direction,” Mr. Gill said. …
Personally, I think if you are going to chose to eat a food with so little nutritional value that it receives a score of 7 or 10, you might as well eat what you like or buy what is on sale. But I do like the idea of having all that nutritional information from the label condensed into a single score for me. It makes shopping that much easier and faster. If you agree, suggest that your favorite grocery store do something similar.
Excerpts from the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704229004575371010407610760.html?mod=rss_Health
Posted by Laurie Puckett at Remmel Wellness Center, a full service chiropractic and wellness facility in St. Petersburg, Florida.
