Whole milk =bad grape nuts = good, huh?

[Guest guest]

That's the standings in the new GUIDING STARS rating system proposed by a large

grocery

store chain and covered today in the New York Times. They don't exactly have

our

perspective on " good fats " BUT this store absolutely NAILS the false health

claims from

products like " Lean Cuisine " , " Health Valley " , " Healthy Choice " and other

oxymoronic

FAUX-NATURAL companies. Har har har. This rating system is stirring up some

interesting

discussions already.... for instance, a whopping 77% of the products THEY SELL

got zero

stars ie, BAD... hummmm......

READ THE ARTICLE:

Hannaford's nutritionists acknowledge that their system is more stringent than

the

guidelines used by the F.D.A. 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.

The Package May Say Healthy, but This Grocer Begs to Differ

By ANDREW MARTIN

The New York Times

Monday, November 6, 2006

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), '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 F.D.A. 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 Faulkner, director of brand communication

at the

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, 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 F.D.A.'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 F. son, 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 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.

The F.D.A., for its part, points to its specific requirements for foods that

make health

claims as well as their labels. It also acknowledges that its policing abilities

go only so far.

" The thing is, a lot of claims we see out there are puffery, " said ph R.

Baca, director of

the office of compliance at the F.D.A.'s Center for Food Safety and Applied

Nutrition. " But

they don't get to the point where we can call them fake or misleading. "

Although Hannaford's star ratings are posted on the same shelf tags that display

prices,

the chain has not changed the way it shelves products or markets them. This may

have

kept food manufacturers from rebelling, but it has not stopped them from

questioning

whether Hannaford is qualified to be the arbiter of healthiness.

" You end up with a lot of consumer confusion, " said Mr. Faulkner of

Soup, which

makes V8 as well as Healthy Request. " Do you defer to the Hannaford Brothers?

The

federal government? "

The label of 's Healthy Request Tomato soup, for instance, boasts that

it is 98

percent fat-free, has zero grams of trans fat, low cholesterol and 30 percent

less sodium

than 's standard tomato soup. " I don't know what their system is, " Mr.

Faulkner

said, referring to Hannaford. " What are they calling too much salt? "

Hannaford, part of Delhaize America, a division of the Delhaize Group in

Brussels, started

Guiding Stars after customer surveys indicated that people were confused about

the

nutritional information available to them. Hannaford formed a seven-member

advisory

panel of nutritionists and a physician to develop a formula for evaluating the

healthiness

of food.

That algorithm evaluates a 100-calorie serving of each product using only the

information

that is available on the " nutrition facts " panel and the ingredients list. A

product receives

credit for vitamins, minerals, dietary fiber and whole grains, but is docked

points for trans

fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, added salt and added sugar.

People who choose to adhere closely to the Hannaford ratings will have Spartan

diets

indeed. Not only did cookies and potato chips rate poorly, but so did whole milk

(although

skim milk received three stars) and products with nourishing-sounding names like

Healthy

Choice Old-Fashioned Chicken Noodle Soup.

Indeed, the " three star " lunches and snacks recommended on Hannaford's Web site

probably bear little relation to the meals most Americans are accustomed to

eating.

Hannaford suggests snacking on grapes, apple slices, raisins, plain yogurt,

celery sticks,

carrots and one to two ounces of popcorn — presumably without salt. A good lunch

would

be grilled chicken on a bed of spinach with a multigrain roll and an apple.

A. Sloan, president of Sloan Trends, which tracks the food industry,

said that

food manufacturers deserve credit for reformulating their products to make them

healthier. But she said it was unrealistic for the manufacturers to remove all

the fat, sugar

and salt because nobody would buy the result.

" They have to keep the taste, " she said. " Look at all those super-duper healthy

products

that are in those healthy food stores. They don't taste good. "

She added, " Nothing is healthy if you get right down to it, except mother's

milk, and that's

probably got too much fat. "

It is hard to tell whether Hannaford's nutrition index has had any impact on

what

consumers are buying. The chain declined to provide sales data.

At a Hannaford store in New Windsor, N.Y., several customers said they had heard

about

Guiding Stars in radio advertisements or seen it in the store, but that it had

not influenced

their purchasing. Several shoppers said they did not see the point.

" I buy whatever it is on my list, " said , 43. " If my kids want

Cheerios, I buy

them Cheerios and don't look at the stars. "

LiseAnne Deoul, 34, said she liked the idea of Guiding Stars even though the

system had

not helped her narrow her choices during a quick stop last week to buy pasta.

" All of it was the same, " she said. " They all had two stars. "

Hannaford officials and members of the advisory panel emphasized that foods with

no

stars were not meant to be shunned.

" They are not everyday foods, " said Ms. Sutherland. " They are great sometimes

foods. "

Nutritionists and food industry analysts said that Hannaford's findings

highlight some

unpleasant truths about Americans and their eating patterns. People want to be

healthier

but do not want to change their behavior, and so marketers have stepped in with

products

that improve on the originals but still leave something to be desired.

The poor marks doled out by Hannaford show " what happens when an independent

group

sets the criteria, " said n Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York

University.

" As for health claims, expect to see more and more and more, " she said. " It's

the only

thing that sells food these days. "