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By ANDREW MARTIN, The New York Times
For many grocery shoppers, the feeling is familiar: that slight swell of virtue that comes from dropping a seemingly healthful product into a shopping cart.
But at one New England grocery chain, choosing some of those products may induce guilt instead.
The chain, Hannaford Brothers, developed a system called Guiding Stars that rated the nutritional value of nearly all the food and drinks at its stores from zero to three stars. Of the 27,000 products that were plugged into Hannaford's formula, 77 percent received no stars, including many, if not most, of the processed foods that advertise themselves as good for you.
These included V8 vegetable juice (too much sodium), Campbell’s Healthy Request Tomato soup (ditto), most Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice frozen dinners (ditto) and nearly all yogurt with fruit (too much sugar). Whole milk? Too much fat -- no stars. Predictably, most fruits and vegetables did earn three stars, as did things like salmon and Post Grape-Nuts cereal.
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.
Hannaford says it is not trying to be preachy or to issue a yes-or-no checklist, just to offer guidance to shoppers who want it -- and if the average consumer’s reliance on the United States Department of Agriculture's food pyramid system is any yardstick, many do not. Furthermore, the company said, there is a place for no-star foods in every balanced diet.
"We are saying there are no bad foods," said Caren Epstein, a Hannaford spokeswoman. "This is a good, better and best system."
Food manufacturers, she said, were apprehensive at first but relaxed when they learned that neither they nor their products would be penalized. "The people who represented salty snacks and cookies understood that they weren’t going to get any stars," Ms. Epstein said.
Hannaford's nutritionists acknowledge that their system is more stringent than the guidelines used by the FDA. The food agency sets standards that food manufacturers must use when they define a product as, say, low in fat or high in fiber, and companies may use those designations even if the product is loaded with less desirable ingredients. Hannaford’s panelists said their formula was more balanced, taking into account all the positives and negatives.
The store chain, with 158 supermarkets in five states, is believed to be the first grocery retailer to have developed such a comprehensive assessment program, and it is trying to have its food-rating algorithm patented.
Not surprising, the food industry still is not entirely happy, and it disputes Hannaford’s conclusions.
"We don’t like the idea that there are good and bad foods out there, and these sort of arbitrary rating systems," said John Faulkner, director of brand communication at the Campbell Soup Company. The Healthy Request line of soup, he said, was "aligned with the government definition of what healthy is."
Similarly, a spokeswoman for ConAgra Foods, Stephanie Childs, said that her company would like to know how Hannaford concluded that many items in its Healthy Choice line did not merit any stars.
"This is surprising to us," Ms. Childs said. Healthy Choice, which offers a range of items from frozen meals to pasta sauces and deli meats, "has to use FDA's very stringent requirements for what is healthy."
Admirers of Guiding Stars say the ratings illustrate how nutrition claims on packages can mislead consumers even if they are technically true. Many packages trumpet the benefits of a few attributes -- high fiber, for instance, or no trans fats -- while ignoring negatives like too much sodium, they said.
"You look at a General Mills product and it looks like the bee's knees, but it may be nutritionally flawed," said Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group based in Washington. "It may be high in sugar even though it has fiber in it."
Many products that are marketed as healthy received zero stars from Hannaford because they contain too much salt or sugar or not enough nutrients, said Lisa A. Sutherland, an assistant professor of pediatrics and a nutrition scientist at Dartmouth Medical School who was part of the advisory panel that developed Hannaford’s formula.
V8, for instance, which says it has "essential antioxidants" and is "vitamin rich," is "like drinking a vitamin with a lot of salt on it," she said. Ms. Sutherland said that the F.D.A.'s guidelines for labeling, including its definition of "healthy," were simply too lenient. Even the low-sodium version of V8 got no stars under the Hannaford system.
V8, for instance, which says it has "essential antioxidants" and is "vitamin rich," is "like drinking a vitamin with a lot of salt on it," she said. Ms. Sutherland said that the F.D.A.'s guidelines for labeling, including its definition of "healthy," were simply too lenient. Even the low-sodium version of V8 got no stars under the Hannaford system.
For many grocery shoppers, the feeling is familiar: that slight swell of virtue that comes from dropping a seemingly healthful product into a shopping cart.
But at one New England grocery chain, choosing some of those products may induce guilt instead.
The chain, Hannaford Brothers, developed a system called Guiding Stars that rated the nutritional value of nearly all the food and drinks at its stores from zero to three stars. Of the 27,000 products that were plugged into Hannaford's formula, 77 percent received no stars, including many, if not most, of the processed foods that advertise themselves as good for you.
These included V8 vegetable juice (too much sodium), Campbell’s Healthy Request Tomato soup (ditto), most Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice frozen dinners (ditto) and nearly all yogurt with fruit (too much sugar). Whole milk? Too much fat -- no stars. Predictably, most fruits and vegetables did earn three stars, as did things like salmon and Post Grape-Nuts cereal.
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.
Hannaford says it is not trying to be preachy or to issue a yes-or-no checklist, just to offer guidance to shoppers who want it -- and if the average consumer’s reliance on the United States Department of Agriculture's food pyramid system is any yardstick, many do not. Furthermore, the company said, there is a place for no-star foods in every balanced diet.
"We are saying there are no bad foods," said Caren Epstein, a Hannaford spokeswoman. "This is a good, better and best system."
Food manufacturers, she said, were apprehensive at first but relaxed when they learned that neither they nor their products would be penalized. "The people who represented salty snacks and cookies understood that they weren’t going to get any stars," Ms. Epstein said.
Hannaford's nutritionists acknowledge that their system is more stringent than the guidelines used by the FDA. The food agency sets standards that food manufacturers must use when they define a product as, say, low in fat or high in fiber, and companies may use those designations even if the product is loaded with less desirable ingredients. Hannaford’s panelists said their formula was more balanced, taking into account all the positives and negatives.
The store chain, with 158 supermarkets in five states, is believed to be the first grocery retailer to have developed such a comprehensive assessment program, and it is trying to have its food-rating algorithm patented.
Not surprising, the food industry still is not entirely happy, and it disputes Hannaford’s conclusions.
"We don’t like the idea that there are good and bad foods out there, and these sort of arbitrary rating systems," said John Faulkner, director of brand communication at the Campbell Soup Company. The Healthy Request line of soup, he said, was "aligned with the government definition of what healthy is."
Similarly, a spokeswoman for ConAgra Foods, Stephanie Childs, said that her company would like to know how Hannaford concluded that many items in its Healthy Choice line did not merit any stars.
"This is surprising to us," Ms. Childs said. Healthy Choice, which offers a range of items from frozen meals to pasta sauces and deli meats, "has to use FDA's very stringent requirements for what is healthy."
Admirers of Guiding Stars say the ratings illustrate how nutrition claims on packages can mislead consumers even if they are technically true. Many packages trumpet the benefits of a few attributes -- high fiber, for instance, or no trans fats -- while ignoring negatives like too much sodium, they said.
"You look at a General Mills product and it looks like the bee's knees, but it may be nutritionally flawed," said Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group based in Washington. "It may be high in sugar even though it has fiber in it."
Many products that are marketed as healthy received zero stars from Hannaford because they contain too much salt or sugar or not enough nutrients, said Lisa A. Sutherland, an assistant professor of pediatrics and a nutrition scientist at Dartmouth Medical School who was part of the advisory panel that developed Hannaford’s formula.
V8, for instance, which says it has "essential antioxidants" and is "vitamin rich," is "like drinking a vitamin with a lot of salt on it," she said. Ms. Sutherland said that the F.D.A.'s guidelines for labeling, including its definition of "healthy," were simply too lenient. Even the low-sodium version of V8 got no stars under the Hannaford system.
V8, for instance, which says it has "essential antioxidants" and is "vitamin rich," is "like drinking a vitamin with a lot of salt on it," she said. Ms. Sutherland said that the F.D.A.'s guidelines for labeling, including its definition of "healthy," were simply too lenient. Even the low-sodium version of V8 got no stars under the Hannaford system.
thanks for this useless piece of info montizzle 
just trying to lead you to a healthy food store as it sounds like you're a health freak
MY MEAT IN THE HOT DESERT.......
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