Nuval, the nutrition rating system that scores product from 0-100, announced this week the addition of a fourth supermarket chain as a partner – United Supermarkets, LLC of Lubbock, Texas, which operates 50 stores under the United Supermarkets, Market Street, and Amigos United names. Only 6 of the stores will be launching NuVal initially, beginning in March 2010. The rest will roll out during the remainder of 2010.

NuVal, originall called ONQI,  is a nutrition rating system developed by Dr. David Katz and other prominent scientists and nutrition experts in order to help shoppers make healthier choices at the supermarket. We explained the system and compared it to the (R.I.P) Smart Choices Program here.

NuVal is currently available at Price Chopper, Hy-Vee, and Meijer supermarkets in 19 states and over 500 supermarkets, according to company.

Coinciding with the PR, the NuVal website has been redesigned and it also includes a game called “Nutrition by the Numbers” where players have to rank 3 products by their NuVal score.

What you need to know:

This is a a small win for the NuVal licensing company, that had expected to be in thousands of supermarkets by this time when the program was announced last year. Nuval has yet to gain entry into one of the larger chains such as Kroeger, Publix, or Safeway.

We recently asked a NuVal board member why this is, but got a general answer that there is “a lot of work in progress.”

Here are a few thoughts on why NuVal is not as far ahead as it expected:

1. NuVal is not sponsored by food manufacturers, as Smart Choices was, and therefore its scores do not show on product packages. They appear on shelf tags together with the prices. Our sources tell us that this is causing a logistical nightmare as products are arranged on different shelves, prices change, and employees are not always aware of the new labeling.

2. NuVal’s competitors, especially Smart Choices and Guiding Stars, as well as individual efforts by some chains, have divided the industry, making it very hard for any player to gain substantially.

3. The recent inquiries by the FDA into “front of pack” nutrition labels may also have supermarkets sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see if a federally mandated standard will render existing systems useless or illegal.

4. Lastly, some supermarkets may find themselves in a conflict of interest. On one hand, providing consumers with more nutrition information is a good thing to do and builds loyalty. On the other, it may create a loss in revenue because customers will now buy less of the profitable junk foods and beverages. These profit-centers occupy substantial real estate in all modern supermarkets.

What to do at the supermarket:

Whether your local supermarket is participating in a nutrition labeling program or not, you can still make sound choices. The best advice is to buy minimally processed foods, with short, understandable ingredient lists. Make sure you get plenty of fruits and vegetables, limit your snacks to a very few, and opt to drink tap water instead of soft drinks.

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Meijer is rolling out what it hopes will be another helpful means for consumers to assess the nutritional quality of foods at the supermarket. NuVal assigns a score of 0-100 to food products based on a proprietary algorithm called ONQI (overall nutritional quality index) developed by top nutrition experts.

According to Dr. David Katz, the scientist behind ONQI / NuVal, the values of  30 nutrients in a food product are crunched in a formula that yields a final score. Nutrients to encourage, such as fiber and vitamin C, increase the score, while saturated fats and sugars reduce it.

As would be expected, vegetables and fruits score high, milk and meats lower, and most processed foods the lowest.

What you need to know:

We covered NuVal in detail when it launched several months ago,  commenting on both the positive and negative aspects of such a system.

On the bright side, the system provides a simple, intuative, front of label indication of a food’s health value.

On the other hand, there is an inherent conflict of interests between retailers and consumers. Most consumers, we assume, want to eat healthy. But retailers want to sell them as much as possible and at high margins. Unfortunately the most profitable products are processed foods (Soft drinks are a great example: water, colors and sugar – very profitable).The healthy foods, less processed, fruits vegetables, grains, and basics like milk and meats, do not carry a high profit margin. For a retailer, steering its customers to healthier products is then, essentially, like someone shooting himself in the foot.

Perhaps this is why NuVal, which hoped to have 15-20 retailers on board by now, can count Meijer only as its third partner, following limited launches at Hy-Vee and Price Chopper in January.

What to do at the supermarket:

Most Americans will have to wait till NuVal hits their local grocery store. So diligent shoppers will have to continue checking the ingredient lists and nutrition labels to make sure they know exactly what they are putting on their families’ plates.

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Here’s an idea to help save lives…

Why not use use consumers’ supermarket loyalty card data in order to inform them about any recalled peanut butter products they may have purchased in the past 2 years?

From CSPI, The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit consumer advocacy group:

“Many retail chains have within their power the ability to protect consumers,” said Sarah Klein, a lawyer with the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “They are routinely collecting customer information and using it for marketing purposes. We’d like to see it used for public health.”

“It’s not enough just to take the tainted products off the supermarket shelf,” Klein said. “Wherever possible, supermarkets should reach out to their customers and help get contaminated food products out of their homes.”

Read press release…

Kudos to Costco, Wegmans, and  Price Chopper who are actively notifying their customers about all recalled products they bought in stores.

What you need to know:

Have you ever wondered why almost all supermarket chain employ some sort of Discount Card / Membership Card?

If you think the reason is to provide you with cheaper prices on select items, think again.

These membership schemes are a great way for supermarkets to learn about your shopping habits. By knowing how much and when you buy certain items, a chain can offer you “special deals”. Some also attempt to lock you in to shopping only at  one chain by amassing points for future discounts.

In reality, these membership cards are more like “no-penalty” cards, because if you choose not use them you will have to overpay for many grocery items, sometimes twice as much as the “member” price.

Unfortunately, supermarket chains, such as Safeway, do not share this data with you, their loyal shopper. Wouldn’t it be great to access online a list of all the stuff you’ve bought over the past year, compare price changes, analyze how much junk food you’ve actually bought, and prepare an improved shopping plan?

Dream on…

The supermarket chains also aggregate the data from all their shoppers and sell it, for example back to manufacturers, who analyze trends and innovate the products of tomorrow.

What to do at the supermarket:

Ask you local supermarket manager for access to information that should be yours to access  in any case.

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Price Chopper introduces NuVal

Northeast supermarket chain Price Chopper, is rolling out NuVal, a nutritional scoring system today. The 114 store chain operates in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania.

The aim of NuVal and other nutritional scoring systems is to simplify the task of choosing healthier foods at the supermarket.

The NuVal approach is especially easy to understand – each product gets a score from 1 (lowest) to 100 (highest) based on the presence of “good” and “bad” nutrients. The system, originally known as ONQI (Overall Nutritional Qulaity Index), was developed by a respectable team of scientists led by Dr David Katz.

We posted a detailed analysis of NuVal’s pros and cons, as well as its competitors, a few months ago.

NuVal and Price Chopper have been testing the system out for some time, and today is the official launch. Another chain currently implementing NuVal is Hy-Vee.

Regional Price Chopper competitors have also boarded the health wagon, with Hannaford Brothers’ intorduction of Guidign Stars in 2006, and Stop & Shop’s Healthy Ideas launced earlier this month.

What to do at the supermarket:

While a quick glance score can help you get an idea as to the healthfulness of a specific product, some aisles are going to rank much better than others. As always, your best bets are minimally processed foods, which are usually found in the supermarket perimeter, not the inner aisles.  Also look for foods with short ingredient lists that you can actually understand.

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The NuVal Nutritional Scoring System has updated its website to include sample score of hundreds of everyday items. We posted about NuVal and its competitors a few months ago.  These nutrition scoring systems aim to simplify the task of choosing healthier foods at the supermarket.

The NuVal approach is especially easy to understand – each product gets a score from 1 (lowest) to 100 (highest) based on the presence of “good” and “bad” nutrients. The system, originally known as ONQI (Overall Nutritional Qulaity Index), was developed by a respectable team of scientists led by Dr David Katz.

Here are some interesting facts:

The top scoring category, unsurprisingly, is fruits and vegetables, with all products scoring 78 to 100, except for coconut, with a mere 24. Could this be a mistake?

The cereal section has products with scores as low as 4, and as high as 100. Hodgson Mill Unprocessed Wheat Bran scores a perfect hundred, but do you know any kids who’ll eat it? Sadly for this blog’s editor, a childhood favorite, Cap’n Crunch, gets a lowly score of 10.

The worst scoring categories are cookies (1-40) and salty snacks(1-52). Cheetos get a measly 5, Doritos a 10. The top scorer is Garden Of Eatin No Salt Blue Tortilla Chips Made With Organic Blue Corn with a score of 52.

Vegetables, either frozen or canned, score anywhere between 2-100, based on their original “fresh score” plus consideration of the nutrition reduction caused by freezing or canning. Canned vegetables usually get plenty of added salt as a preservative and flavor enhancer, but unfortunately this lowers their score.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you are pondering which cereal to choose from, perhaps NuVal can help you. Right now, the shelf display scoring system is being tested at Price-Chopper and Hy-Vee. Rollout in other groceries has been expected in fall 2008, and early 2009, but it perhaps the logistical challenges are causing some delays. If you have come across an NuVal score that helped you make a halthier shopping decision, please share with us.

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Have you ever wondered what’s inside that tasty TV dinner, instant pudding, or granola bar? How healthy, or not? Theoretically, we can learn a lot about a packaged food item just by reading its nutrition panel. Unfortunately for many of us, the nutrition information, ingredient list, and health claims on the package tend to confuse more than elucidate. As a result, consumers make misinformed purchase decisions. Several labeling initiatives have recently launched with a mission to simplify the nutrition information for consumers. (For some background, check our post about the history of food labels.)

A few days ago we reviewed the brand new Smart Choices Program. Today, a look at another front of package labeling system – NuVal (Nutritional Value Scoring System). NuVal was announced in late 2007 as ONQI (Overall Nutritional Quality Index). It is a scoring system that rates food on a scale of 1-100. The higher the score, the more nutritious the product.

The proprietary system consists of an algorithm that inputs values of over 30 different nutrients (i.e. protein, carbs, fats, vitamins, and minerals), and outputting a single score. The system looks at “nutrients to encourage”, such as fiber and omega-3 fatty acids, as well as “nutrients to avoid” such as saturated fat and sodium.

The NuVal score is displayed at the supermarket on shelf tags and aisle signage, but not on the product package itself. NuVal was supposed to launch earlier this summer with several grocery chains. After a slight delay, Hy-Vee, a midwestern chain out of Iowa, was recently announced as a partner. Price Chopper has joined in the North East. Both are limited launches though – only several stores and several product categories are offered now.

NuVal / ONQI is the brainchild of Dr. David Katz, a Professor of Public Health Practice, and a nationally recognized expert in the fields of weight control and nutrition. He was previously Director of Medical Studies in Public Health, at the Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Katz assembled a top notch team of researchers to create the ONQI system, and it took them 2 years to do it. The grading algorithm itself has not been disclosed to the public.

NuVal LLC is  a joint venture of Yale university’s Griffin Hospital and Topco Associates, a privately held cooperative of food retailers and wholesalers. Unlike “Smart Choices”, food manufacturers are not part of this initiative, although the ONQI score requires additional information from manufacturers that is not found on food labels.

The good:

1. Simplicity. Everyone can relate to a numeric score of 1-100.

2. Uniformity. A single scoring system across all products enables consumers to compare apples to oranges, literally. (not that it would make any sense – both are nutritious and tasty).

3. Depth. A NuVal score of 1-100 provides more breadth to a product’s healthfulness than a Yes/No benchmark that appears only on selected items. Assuming all products in a supermarket will carry a NuVal score, consumers will readily compare between items in a category and choose the one with highest ranking.

4. Independence. Although not mentioned explicitly, it seems that food manufacturers were not directly involved in defining the NuVal scoring algorithm. Hopefully this sets a higher rating standard, more in favor of consumers than in the interests of manufacturers.

The not so good:

1. Mystery Scoring. NuVal is not disclosing its scoring mechanism. Smart Choices posted their criteria online, and those interested can understand exactly why one product is eligible for a check mark, and the other is not. According to NuVal, its algorithm is patent pending (which means it will be published by the US patent office once it is approved). If so, why not publish it now so consumers can be confident in their choices?

2. Manufacturer Buy In. Some of the nutrients used by the NuVal algorithm do not uniformly appear on food nutrition labels (i.e. omega-3, Total bioflavanoids, vitamin B12).  This means either the algorithm can’t calculate scores uniformly within a product category, or that all manufacturers need to provide additional nutrient information to NuVal, a third party. The chances for that happening are slim, especially for those already comitted to Smart Choices.

3. Retailer Buy In. What happens if best selling products in the supermarket get low scores? Will retailers willingly want to lose sales of soda pop and salty snacks because of their single digit score? Or are they betting that customers won’t care?

4. Placement. This may seem trivial, but in those supermarkets where price is displayed on the shelf instead of on the product, there are always mismatches. Put NuVal indicators on the shelves and you’ve added another level of complexity to bleary eyed associates stocking shelves at 4am. With Smart Choices, the approval seal is on the product package itself.

5. No personalization. This is an issue with Smart Choices as well. A middle aged diabetic has different dietary needs than a healthy teenager or a senior suffering from hypertension and trying to reduce sodium intake. How can a low-fat fruit yogurt have the same score for each of them? Ideally, a person would see a personalized score for each product.

Conclusion:

The teams behind NuVal and Smart Choices have made good headway in simplifying a very complex nutrition label and boiling it down to very simple indicator for consumer decision. Both systems sport some flaws, but having them at a supermarket seems to be better than not having them at all.

As the goal of both Smart Choices and NuVal is to become a nationwide standard, it will be interesting to see how the imminent competition between the two systems will play out. Also interesting to look for are the FDA’s actions. Will the FDA choose to create some sort of uniform benchmark like the UK’s Food Standard Agency Traffic Lights?

What do you think? Comments below.

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