Oct 13, 2009 11:03 pm US/Eastern
New Programs Make Reading Food Labels Easier
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
Going to the supermarket can be overwhelming when you are trying to find healthy foods that your family will like.
Some shoppers complain they don't have time to read the food labels on every package. Now there are several new nutrition programs promising to make that easier.
Price Chopper is using a plan called
NuVal. It's a point-based system which assigns an overall nutrition value to each product. The scores go from one to 100 with the higher the number, the healthier the food.
So grapes, a healthy food, get a score of 91. Pepperidge Farm Chocolate Chunk Cookies get a 6. But some scores might surprise you.
Raisin Bran cereal, usually considered a healthy option gets a 23, and so do Froot Loops.
Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center, developed the NuVal program along with other health professionals. He explains why that scoring makes sense.
"The front of the package will tell you about the bran, it will tell you about the raisins, it won't tell you about the copious additions of salt or sugar."
The goal is not to stop you from buying foods you like, such as cookies, but to look at the numbers and try to pick ones with higher values.
NuVal
Healthy Ideas
Smart Choices
Stop and Shop has its own nutrition program,
Healthy Ideas, developed by Dr. George Blackburn, a weight loss expert at Harvard University and a team of dieticians.
"Healthy Ideas was established with the stringent criteria available using the USDA definition for extra lean and the FDA definition of healthy," says Andrea Astrachan, Stop and Shop's Vice President of Consumer Affairs.
Under this system, a product either gets the Healthy Ideas tag or it doesn't. You won't find tags, for example in the potato chip aisle. However, if you are looking for juice, there are some products that get the tag, and some that don't.
"We wanted one simple easy symbol on the shelf tag that would denote which items were healthy," says Astrachan.
A third healthy eating program is
Smart Choices which was designed and paid for by 10 food manufacturers including Kellogg's and Kraft.
Mike Hughes is the chairman of Smart Choices.
"We believe that the Smart Choices program, taken in its totality, will encourage people to eat in line with the U.S. Dietary guidelines," he said.
But the program has come under fire because products like Cocoa Krispies and Teddy Grahams are included in their list of healthy choices.
"The point of the program is to make processed foods look healthy when you really want people eating foods that have been as minimally processed as possible, says Marion Nestle, a nutrition expert at New York University.
Three different programs, three different approaches. Does this help consumers?
"I hate to see the food shopper get dizzy trying to fill up the basket," says Joan Salge Blake, a nutrition professor at Boston University. She believes everyone needs to get on the same page.
"Ironically, there is one standard out there because we have the nutrition fact panel on the product…so this is the standard that the FDA is behind."
Salge Blake says consumers need to be educated on how to use the label more efficiently.
And there's more to come. Shaw's supermarkets plans to roll out it own program called Nutrition IQ in the near future.
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