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Customer-centered grocery chain
A New England grocery chain has begun rating the nutritional value in the products it sells. They're apparently committed to being customer-centered; most of the store's own products get low ratings.
Unsurprisingly, some big food marketers aren't happy... seems they have something to lose when customers get better information.
From The Package May Say Healthy, but This Grocer Begs to Differ - New York Times:
At a time when more and more products are being marketed as healthy, the fact that so many items seemed to flunk Hannaford's inspection raises questions about the integrity of the nutrition claims, which are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration - or possibly about whether Hannaford made its standards too prissy or draconian. Either way, the results do seem to confirm the nagging feeling that the benefits promoted by many products have a lot more to do with marketing than nutrition.
Furthermore, the rating system, introduced in September, puts the grocery store in the awkward position of judging the very products it is trying to sell, not to mention the companies that supply the foods. In fact, most of Hannaford's own store-branded products did not get stars.
I prefer the approach that British chain stores, like Sainsbury or Tesco, have regarding this issue. All of their products have a graph of how much salt, fat, calories and sugar they have. If any of these items has too much of it it's red, if it's ok, green. That way the decision on how healthy it is falls back to the consumer. He may decide to eat one item with lots of salt and another with virtually any and his diet will be balanced. They also have a classification system for the entire product. Some say: ok to eat once in a while, some say: eat at will. To me this approach is more informative, since the stars only take one product into account and not the whole balance. You can eat bacon with vegetables for instance. That will make it more balanced.
More information here:
http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/food/healthylifestyle/latestonhealth/Healthatsainsburys/wheelofhealth_Jan+2006.htm?prevUrl=%2fsearch.htm%3fquery%3dwheel%26x%3d0%26y%3d0
http://www.tesco.com/health/eating/?page=label
The upscale grocery store in my neighborhood has started marking fish according to sustainability, and it's changed my shopping habits. My kid loves shrimp, but I only buy the kind that's either sustainable or so-so. I refuse to buy the red-flag shrimp, because the power of the purse is the best I can do.
BTW, the Monterey Aquarium's Seafood Watch is a great resource for this as well: http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp