Get Smart Food: Read The Label

Confused by food choices, good versus bad? Help may be on the way for you. To assist consumers in determining the nutritional value of foods while shopping, rating systems are being developed by grocery chains. This rating system is separate from the existing nutritional label and packaging claims required by the federal government.

Robert Murray, director of the Center for Healthy Weight and Nutrition at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and co-founder of a rating system used in vending machines, helped develop this initiative.

“For 30 years we’ve been telling consumers what foods to avoid,'' he says. "Now it’s time to start telling them what foods to look for and help guide them through the store to make smart choices.”

One of the first such rating systems, developed in New England and New York, is known as Guiding Stars, according to U.S. News & World Report, which offers research, rankings and advice.

Maine-based Hannaford Bros. Co. launched the rating system in its 164 supermarkets. Meat, dairy, fresh produce, and packaged goods receive a one, two, or three star rating that corresponds to a good, better, or best nutritional score, according to the company.

A team of nutritional scientists and public health experts developed the Guiding Stars. The label formula credits the product for the presence of vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber, whole grains. On the other hand, it detracts for added sugar, saturated and trans-fats, cholesterol, and sodium.

Over two-thirds of Hannaford’s products have no star rating or haven’t even been considered. Many critics claim the number is too high and ignores too many of the store’s offerings, thus making it difficult for shoppers to tell which foods may have missed the cutoff for a star and which were toward the bottom of the nutrition scale.

“Highlighting the foods with the most nutrition per calories and rating the ‘best of the worst’ was what our customers wanted,” says Julie Greene, Hannaford’s director of healthy living.

Since its debut in 2006, Guiding Stars has had a direct impact on consumers’ buying patterns, according to Greene. Sales of products with stars are outpacing those without and, in some cases, by wide margins. Starred packaged foods like pastas and canned soups sold at the rate of 2 1/2 times the rate of items with no stars while sales of breakfast cereals with stars sold more than three times higher than those without.

Milk as another example uses a rating of three stars for skimmed compared to a no-star rating for whole. Hannaford’s parent company, Belgian-based Delhaize Group, is now implementing Guiding Stars to its subsidiary grocery chains, Sweetbay and Food Lion.

While this three-tiered system is simple and straightforward, according to David Katz, director of the Yale-Griffin Research Center, it lacks a level of differentiation among similar foods. It can’t help consumers choose, for example, among several two-star cheeses.

Katz and a team of physicians and nutrition scientists, including the president of the American Cancer Society and the inventor of one of the first food-rating systems, the glycemic index, have developed their own program – the Overall Nutritional Quality Index.

The ONQI considers a product’s healthful content – vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and omega fatty acids. It also considers unhealthful qualities such as sodium, sugar, saturated fats, and cholesterol. The difference lies in ONQI’s 100-point scale, which better highlights small differences between foods than Guiding Stars, according to Katz.

“The formula also measures the biological quality of amino acids, the glycemic load, and energy density to calculate how the concentrations of particular nutrients in a food compared to the recommended concentrations in a healthy diet,” Katz says.

They plan to launch ONQI in supermarkets across the country by this fall and to offer an interactive online supplemental guide. But some experts worry that rating systems such as ONQI may cause shoppers to neglect portion control and to choose too many foods of the same type.

Brian Wansink, executive director of the USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion and a professor of consumer behavior at Cornell, sees some problems. “I’m concerned that people may eat the ice cream with the highest rated number, or the highest-rated muffin or candy and skip out on fruits, vegetables, dairy, and meat,” Wansink says

But Katz insists rating foods is a public health imperative, given the epidemic levels of childhood obesity and diabetes, in addition to offering good business opportunities for all parties involved.

“The food supply is riddled with deception and misleading information for health-conscious consumers,'' Katz says. "And there’s a strong recognition among food manufacturers that having third-party credibility benefits themselves and the consumers.”

WMB believes consumers will one day see a total score on their receipts at the checkout counter. This will objectively rate the healthfulness of their overall diet and make it easier for them to determine which choices make sense.

In the meantime, consumers will continue to use information and input from professionals including their doctor, exercise trainer, or other appropriate sources. Moderation in all areas is probably the best course of action.

This post is from TechMan, WMB co-author who blogs about trends, issues and ideas affecting business, industry, technology and consumers.