kyrasdad
Sat, Dec-01-07, 08:40
Is It Healthy? Food Rating Systems Battle It Out (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/business/01food.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin)
By ANDREW MARTIN
At the grocery store, shoppers confront a dizzying array of labels promoting whole grains, reduced fat, antioxidants or vitamins. Some foods are said to be “Smart Choices,” while others are a “Sensible Solution.”
Amid the confusion, how can consumers tell whether Cheerios, say, are better or worse than Special K? Is light mayonnaise more nutritious than regular? Which are worse, Nilla Wafers or Chunky Chips Ahoy?
Suddenly, after years of chaotic, conflicting health claims on food, various groups are rushing to create systems that are supposed to make sense of it all. And grocery chains are starting to line up behind one system or another. Within months, shoppers across the country may find numerical ratings, star ratings or letter grades plastered on the shelf next to virtually every product in a store.
“We know that our customers are looking for answers in how to make their diet better,” said Ric Jurgens, president and chief executive of Hy-Vee grocery stores and chairman of a cooperative that has endorsed one system. He says it “provides a revolutionary and simple way to assess all the foods in our stores.”
But consumer advocates worry that the sudden flurry of rating systems could add to shopper confusion, not ameliorate it, at least until one of the systems wins out and becomes a national standard. Moreover, determining what foods are healthier is as much art as science, requiring judgment about how much value to attach to various scientific findings about diet and health.
The ratings systems under development all use government dietary guidance as a starting point. Then they consider various nutrients and give them scores to compute a single rating that is supposed to reflect the aggregate nutritional value of a food.
The groups developing these systems claim they will be a simplification over the nutritional labels required by the government and the plethora of logos and slogans meant to signify good nutrition.
In Washington yesterday, Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center in Connecticut, unveiled a rating system called the Overall Nutritional Quality Index, or ONQI for short. The Katz system will evaluate all foods in a grocery store on a 1-to-100 scale, with 100 being the healthiest.
The cooperative that Jurgens heads, which includes regional grocery chains, has bought a stake in Dr. Katz’s algorithm, and some of the stores plan to begin using it on their shelves next summer.
Earlier in the week, the Hannaford Brothers Company, a Maine grocery chain, announced that it would license its “Guiding Stars” rating system to other grocery chains next year. Started a little more than a year ago, the Guiding Stars system was developed by a team of academics and rates food from zero to three stars, with three being the healthiest. Hannaford says higher-rated packaged goods are selling more briskly.
Finally, a noted University of Washington nutritionist, Adam Drewnowski, said he, too, planned to unveil a scoring system that could be translated into numerical scores or letter grades.
Prof. Drewnowski said the problem with many of the health logos in stores was that they focused on negative attributes like sodium and saturated fat but did not account for positive attributes.
“It’s not enough to come up with a score that spinach is healthier than potato chips,” said Prof. Drewnowski, director of the university’s Center for Public Health Nutrition. “What happens to the vast majority of foods in the middle of the range? How do they compare? Ours does that.”
Professor Drewnowski’s scoring system will be published in academic journals. The other two systems are proprietary, prompting some experts to complain that their merits will be hard to evaluate.
The scoring scramble comes at a time when food manufacturers, grocery stores and the federal government have acknowledged that the profusion of labels on food packaging might confuse consumers.
Many food companies have their own logos and criteria for better-for-you foods, including Kraft’s “Sensible Solutions,” Pepsico’s “Smart Spot” and Unilever’s “Choices.” Those that do not have such logos have nonetheless festooned their packages with labels advertising less salt, more fiber, more calcium and so on.
The labels have gotten so out of hand that the nation’s top food manufacturers and grocers have been meeting regularly to come up with a uniform label for healthy food, something that is being tried in Europe with mixed results.
The Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, held a two-day hearing in September on the proliferation of health-related labels and how they influence consumer decisions. The meeting was held at the behest of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition advocacy group, which argues a government-sanctioned nutrition rating system is warranted.
“With Hannaford giving a food no stars but it has the American Heart Association logo on it, what is a consumer supposed to make of that?” said Michael F. Jacobson, the group’s executive director. “I think we are going to have competing systems until the federal government steps in.”
Federal officials said they were gathering public comments after the hearing and had not reached any conclusions. Many grocery stores have not yet bought into the idea of a single rating system, either.
“We would want to see good consumer testing and know that it doesn’t confuse consumers more than it helps them,” said Jane Andrews, corporate nutrition manager for Wegmans Food Markets, a grocery chain based in Rochester.
Dr. Katz said the impetus for developing a rating system for groceries was his real-life experience as a doctor and father of five children. His patients and his family struggled to interpret the labels on food packaging.
For instance, a consumer may think that Hellman’s Light Mayonnaise is healthier than the company’s regular mayonnaise. In fact, it has less saturated fat than the regular mayonnaise but more sodium; over all, by Dr. Katz’s calculation, the regular mayonnaise is healthier.
“The public is just too befuddled,” Dr. Katz said.
He gathered a panel of academics that weighed nutritional factors ranging from vitamins and bioflavonoids to trans fatty acids and sodium in their algorithm. So far, they have scored 20,000 foods and will have 50,000 done by the time the rating system appears in stores next summer.
Where Hannaford’s system assigned stars to 28 percent of the food items in the store, meaning that 72 percent got no stars, Dr. Katz said his system would provide more specific guidance for every food item in a store.
A preliminary ranking of foods found many predictable results, but some that were surprising. Cocoa Krispies scored last for nutrition among breakfast cereals, and salmon was tops among meats. Kiwifruit rated at the top among fruit.
Oh, and Cheerios, by Dr. Katz’s method, are better for you than Special K. Chunky Chips Ahoy turn out to be slightly worse than Nilla Wafers.
By ANDREW MARTIN
At the grocery store, shoppers confront a dizzying array of labels promoting whole grains, reduced fat, antioxidants or vitamins. Some foods are said to be “Smart Choices,” while others are a “Sensible Solution.”
Amid the confusion, how can consumers tell whether Cheerios, say, are better or worse than Special K? Is light mayonnaise more nutritious than regular? Which are worse, Nilla Wafers or Chunky Chips Ahoy?
Suddenly, after years of chaotic, conflicting health claims on food, various groups are rushing to create systems that are supposed to make sense of it all. And grocery chains are starting to line up behind one system or another. Within months, shoppers across the country may find numerical ratings, star ratings or letter grades plastered on the shelf next to virtually every product in a store.
“We know that our customers are looking for answers in how to make their diet better,” said Ric Jurgens, president and chief executive of Hy-Vee grocery stores and chairman of a cooperative that has endorsed one system. He says it “provides a revolutionary and simple way to assess all the foods in our stores.”
But consumer advocates worry that the sudden flurry of rating systems could add to shopper confusion, not ameliorate it, at least until one of the systems wins out and becomes a national standard. Moreover, determining what foods are healthier is as much art as science, requiring judgment about how much value to attach to various scientific findings about diet and health.
The ratings systems under development all use government dietary guidance as a starting point. Then they consider various nutrients and give them scores to compute a single rating that is supposed to reflect the aggregate nutritional value of a food.
The groups developing these systems claim they will be a simplification over the nutritional labels required by the government and the plethora of logos and slogans meant to signify good nutrition.
In Washington yesterday, Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center in Connecticut, unveiled a rating system called the Overall Nutritional Quality Index, or ONQI for short. The Katz system will evaluate all foods in a grocery store on a 1-to-100 scale, with 100 being the healthiest.
The cooperative that Jurgens heads, which includes regional grocery chains, has bought a stake in Dr. Katz’s algorithm, and some of the stores plan to begin using it on their shelves next summer.
Earlier in the week, the Hannaford Brothers Company, a Maine grocery chain, announced that it would license its “Guiding Stars” rating system to other grocery chains next year. Started a little more than a year ago, the Guiding Stars system was developed by a team of academics and rates food from zero to three stars, with three being the healthiest. Hannaford says higher-rated packaged goods are selling more briskly.
Finally, a noted University of Washington nutritionist, Adam Drewnowski, said he, too, planned to unveil a scoring system that could be translated into numerical scores or letter grades.
Prof. Drewnowski said the problem with many of the health logos in stores was that they focused on negative attributes like sodium and saturated fat but did not account for positive attributes.
“It’s not enough to come up with a score that spinach is healthier than potato chips,” said Prof. Drewnowski, director of the university’s Center for Public Health Nutrition. “What happens to the vast majority of foods in the middle of the range? How do they compare? Ours does that.”
Professor Drewnowski’s scoring system will be published in academic journals. The other two systems are proprietary, prompting some experts to complain that their merits will be hard to evaluate.
The scoring scramble comes at a time when food manufacturers, grocery stores and the federal government have acknowledged that the profusion of labels on food packaging might confuse consumers.
Many food companies have their own logos and criteria for better-for-you foods, including Kraft’s “Sensible Solutions,” Pepsico’s “Smart Spot” and Unilever’s “Choices.” Those that do not have such logos have nonetheless festooned their packages with labels advertising less salt, more fiber, more calcium and so on.
The labels have gotten so out of hand that the nation’s top food manufacturers and grocers have been meeting regularly to come up with a uniform label for healthy food, something that is being tried in Europe with mixed results.
The Food and Drug Administration, meanwhile, held a two-day hearing in September on the proliferation of health-related labels and how they influence consumer decisions. The meeting was held at the behest of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition advocacy group, which argues a government-sanctioned nutrition rating system is warranted.
“With Hannaford giving a food no stars but it has the American Heart Association logo on it, what is a consumer supposed to make of that?” said Michael F. Jacobson, the group’s executive director. “I think we are going to have competing systems until the federal government steps in.”
Federal officials said they were gathering public comments after the hearing and had not reached any conclusions. Many grocery stores have not yet bought into the idea of a single rating system, either.
“We would want to see good consumer testing and know that it doesn’t confuse consumers more than it helps them,” said Jane Andrews, corporate nutrition manager for Wegmans Food Markets, a grocery chain based in Rochester.
Dr. Katz said the impetus for developing a rating system for groceries was his real-life experience as a doctor and father of five children. His patients and his family struggled to interpret the labels on food packaging.
For instance, a consumer may think that Hellman’s Light Mayonnaise is healthier than the company’s regular mayonnaise. In fact, it has less saturated fat than the regular mayonnaise but more sodium; over all, by Dr. Katz’s calculation, the regular mayonnaise is healthier.
“The public is just too befuddled,” Dr. Katz said.
He gathered a panel of academics that weighed nutritional factors ranging from vitamins and bioflavonoids to trans fatty acids and sodium in their algorithm. So far, they have scored 20,000 foods and will have 50,000 done by the time the rating system appears in stores next summer.
Where Hannaford’s system assigned stars to 28 percent of the food items in the store, meaning that 72 percent got no stars, Dr. Katz said his system would provide more specific guidance for every food item in a store.
A preliminary ranking of foods found many predictable results, but some that were surprising. Cocoa Krispies scored last for nutrition among breakfast cereals, and salmon was tops among meats. Kiwifruit rated at the top among fruit.
Oh, and Cheerios, by Dr. Katz’s method, are better for you than Special K. Chunky Chips Ahoy turn out to be slightly worse than Nilla Wafers.