Over the next year you will start to see a new “number” in your grocery stores – the Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI). This new index is being marketed under the NuVal Nutritional Scoring System and was to have launched in three major US supermarket chains this past September, although I have not been able to pinpoint the names of the three chains.
The system, developed over a two-year period by a panel of 12 medical and nutrition experts from leading North American universities and health organizations, uses a proprietary algorithmic formula to score the nutritional value of foods on a scale of one to 100, weighing some 30 different nutrient factors including fiber, Vitamin content, Omega 3 fatty acids, saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, sugar, protein quality, energy density, glycemic load, et al.
A higher ONQI score reflects foods with higher nutritional value, offering consumers the opportunity to evaluate products within and across specific food categories -
- Fruits & Vegetables
- Meat & Poultry
- Seafood
- Frozen Vegetables
- Canned Vegetables
- Salty Snacks
- Cereal
- Cookies
- Crackers
- Pasta
So, now shoppers can literally compare apples to oranges, as well as apples to chocolate, apples to potato chips and just about anything else you would care to compare an apple to.
My Two Cents:
I have admit that I am pretty skeptical about the value of this system. Do we really need someone to tell us that Pepperidge Farm Bordeaux Cookies (ONQI score: 2) are not as healthy for us as blueberries (ONQI score: 100)?
As Michael Pollan points out in his stellar book, In Defense of Food, if you stick to the perimeter of the supermarket and eat foods that your great grandparents would recognize as food, the better your overall nutrition will likely be.
Clearly, processed foods are not as good as whole foods.
Clearly, we are in the midst of an obesity epidemic.
Historically, in times of recession consumers turn to cheaper food options such as energy-dense foods high in starch, sugar and fat.
This past December, New York’s Governor, David Paterson, proposed an 18% sales tax on sugary beverages such as soda. The estimated $404 million that this tax would generate over the course of a year would go towards funding public health programs, including obesity prevention programs, across New York State.
This to me seems like a step in the right direction. The next obvious step would be to subsidize more healthy foods (fruits and vegetables) so that consumers have a great incentive to buy them.
The real “numbers” consumers need to help motivate them to purchase more healthful foods are the numbers that will impact their wallets.
Train hard; stay strong.
Peace.
Susan
www.catapultfitnessblog.com
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
it might be cool to compare foods, but those who are creating the grading system have a massive task ahead of them to do it right… if it can be done at all.
I completely disagree with the author about taxing sugery food. that’s the last thing we need is higher taxes on anything right now! Hello we are in a recession right now the government is over spending and we don’t need to feed the over weight government with more taxes. And what about health people like me and my husband who every once in a while like to treat ourselves to an unhealthy treat like a Coke? Why should we pay higher taxes on those items and fund the over weight? How about the government giving a tax breck or credit to healthy people who pass their yearly physicals and dont put a strain on the health care system and tax the over weight who do strain the system. Or how about not allowing people on food stamps to buy junk food? Here the government is directly funding the over weight with our tax dollars. Think about that for a second…we stop funding obesity through food stamps, which will in turn cut back on health care, the people on food stamps will be forced to buy more fruits and veggies, which with save us in taxes because we won’t have to subsidize farmers, and this is all done without having to tax anyone. What’s wrong with Americans today that think our cure all is taxing everything more instead of cutting back on government spending?!?!?!
I totally agree with you that our government is out of control, and taxing the hell out of people can not and WILL NOT fix it. I just wanted to add that in addition to creating an unnecessay tax, we would simply be giving the government MORE control over our daily lives. It is none of uncle sam's business what I choose to eat, drink, buy etc.
It is the governments business what garbage you put into your body if, in a few decades your hands will be held out straight asking for medicare to pay your medical bills. Not that there's many type II diabetics out there. Sheesh! Did you see the words "obesity prevention programs?" That includes any family you may have that aren't already fat. If you want to indulge in a soda every now and then it's not like you'll be broke tomorrow. The fatty's that drink a case of soda a day should subsidize there own future. Lord knows they are already taxing the system. I am a paramedic. Please let me inform you that it is an unusual day when we transport skinny people to the hospital with chest pain and shortness of breath. Add onto that they are on some sort of public health system already. Guess who pays for that… you and I do already. Tax the hell out of the fatty's if you ask me.
Well obviously her method would work to prevent you from having the sugary food if the tax on Coke would discourage you from the coke. Maybe you don't need the discouragement but its not about you, is it? Its about whats best for the country. Its the most efficient and practical method — what you claim to do is impossible to put into practice (taxing on a person's weight). Taxing is a great way to encourage/ discourage a population, but you need to work within the system that has been built.
It doesn't seem like Anum understands the whole is the sum of its individual parts.
Taxing is a great way to manipulate the market to keep certain activist groups in business. You need to learn to recognize when to buck the established system and advocate for a better one.
I think this is a great idea because people are visually stimulated. Of course most people know that blueberries are healthier than cookies but when a rating is slapped on the cookies people are more likely to feel bad about eating them and will look for a healthier option. brilliant.
It's amazing how completely clueless some people are about the nutritional content of food. I know a very obese person who had absolutely no idea that her literally completely vegetable-free diet was unhealthy, and that frozen chicken nuggets did not constitute a complete and healthy diet. Really. The nutrition index is actually a great idea. (Assuming that the people who most need it actually look at it…)
I agree that it is amazing, but I think its actually fairly common for the younger generations out there these days. I know that I personally have only become more active in watching what I eat as I approach my 30th birthday and am surprised every day at the junk that is in the food that I'm used to eating. (But no longer eating
)
The answer is yes, some people do need an index to tell them that blueberries are better than cookies. I know some of those people. It's simply an education factor. They're not stupid they're just from a different time and simply don't associate things they way that many of us do.
Sounds like a new and interesting tool in the arsenal against supermarkets full of cheap, nutritionally bankrupt foods. Unfortunately, the marketing has to overcome the uneducated likes of those on this comment post that are adverse to price as an incentive. Currently, the reason many are oveweight is because price disincentivizes good choices and encourages bad ones. Turning that around is a great thing. And, btw, Lacey… you ARE ALREADY FUNDING THE OVERWEIGHT. Considering the enormous number of disorders in this country that are linked to poor health, our insurance system continues to grow in order to meet that demand. This equates to higher insurance prices for you! Pill popping paid for group health insurance plans as a means to repairing the bad choices at supermarkets is less beneficial than a moderate tax increase on nutritionally empty foods to encourage good purchases.
Simply put, taxation of sugary drinks is an attempt to legislate a certain behaviour pattern. While I am all for cutting back or even eliminating the sugar from my diet, I have no right to tell any of you how you should run your diet. You eat what you want to eat. You eat what you deem necessary or right or pleasurable. I have no say in it, and neither does the government. Things such as this have not worked in the past, either. Prohibition was a resounding success, right? Speed limits have gone up because drivers are so much safer these days, right? Look, indexing the foods is a decent enough idea. I always enjoy more information so I can make as educated a decision as I can. But if the government thinks that it can come into my home and tell me or my family what it can eat or drink, then they are really over-reaching their bounds.
THANK YOU! Finally someone who gets it! Amen!
Let's try and keep the freedoms we still have, shall we?
So long as their is a government there will be taxes that some agree with and others don't. I'd like to agree with it conceptually, but practically speaking the "big government needs to stay out of my home" line is complete rubbish. I bet that a lot of they people that claim they support minimal or no government intervention in their lives actually support at least one of the following in some shape or form: mortgage interest tax deduction, government support for student loans, research grants and/or fellowships, the proposed carbon tax and/or cap-and-trade, medicare/medicaid, speed limits, etc. All of these distort incentives and inevitably result in a segment of the population pursuing its own self-interest at a cost to some other segment of the population.
Sharktail – the government isn't coming into your home and telling you and your family what to eat. The use of a "sin" tax on junk food is an attempt to use what leverage the government actually has to influence behavior. Legislation about what you can and cannot eat would be a different matter.
Prohibition was a case where the government acted in a high-handed way through legislation and it backfired. History does teach – even well-meaning legislators.
Sin taxes do work. In New York state, introduction of a much higher tax on cigarettes likely contributed to a 12% decrease in smoking over the following year.
http://www.emaxhealth.com/2/58/31581/cigarette-ta...
A sin tax does not *tell* anyone what they can or can't eat. It discourages undesirable behaviour by instituting penalties.
But, by all means…keep on paying exorbitant insurance rates to subsidize those who do not follow a healthy diet, smoke, drink to excess, and so forth. Here in Canada, a pack of cigarettes costs $12. We penalize the heck out of smokers…but then I don't pay a for health insurance – it's covered out of tax dollars. So…if our tax dollars are covering your triple-bypass…well, thank you very much…I want legislation in place to discourage behaviours that drain the system.
Sorry angie…while cigarette purchases may have gone down in ny, they went up in nj.
extra taxation merely increases illegal means of obtaining…and there has been an increase of "cig runners" purchasing cigarettes over the border and bringing them into the city to sell at a reduced price.
I'm not sure I would be interested in using this system for things like fresh fruits and veggies, but when it comes to things like cereal or breads, juices and cookies, I would like to have an easy way to see which are a better choice (mind you not a great choice, but clearly some are better than others) without having to spend 20 minutes comparing this brand to that brand until I find one that is the best of the bunch. I definitely wouldn't be comparing fresh foods to processed foods. Although I can see how many people would be doing just that.
I agree – certainly blueberries are healthier than cookies, but is Fiber One Cereal healthier than Special K? Grilled chicken is better than honey roasted, but how much better? Another value would be for foods that claim healthfulness, like frozen meals and baked potato chips. It would be nice to get an overall sense of the truth of those claims.
However, the danger (for me, anyway) would be in choosing healthy foods but not varied foods. Can't live on blueberries, and I always have to remind myself to get protein and calcium.
umm…or we could just get the government out of the insurance mandating business altogether, and let insurance companies charge you based on your risk, and then let people choose to eat whatever they want.
that's a great, effective way to incentiveize healthy eating, and allow individuals to choose not to do so, if they happen to want to eat a bucket of ice cream a day. freedom means freedom to make bad decisions.
adding another layer of governmental oversight is outright foolishness, and naive. providing information for people to make their own choices is fine, so long as tax dollars are not being spent to do so (I personally don't care about these numbers, and don't want to have to pay to provide them for people whose parents either didn't care or were too foolish to give them a general knowledge of what constitutes a 'healthy' food, and should not be forced by gunpoint to pay for this parental failing).
the justification for extra taxation falls apart when one realizes that it is government interaction that has caused the obesity externalities that one must now pay for via poor-food-choice-premium-subsidization.
I’m skeptical of producer subsidies on “healthy” foods. Don’t forget that corn, a reasonably healthy food in and of itself, when subsidized, gave rise to HFCS. Any such subsidy needs to be limited to foods that are sold to consumers with little or no processing. Otherwise we’ll end up with High Fructose Blueberry Syrup in everything.
Right on.
And as everybody complains about taxing sugary food remember we are essentially doing that to healthy foods by subsidizing corn and wheat (which in turn gets mutilated into a high fructose syrup or bleached nutrition less white bread)…Subsidizing fruit and vegetables to be sold in their natural state is the way to go…or maybe create a 'processing' tax. Try going to the grocery story and compare what $10 will buy in whole grain bread, fruits and veggies vs white bread, twinkies and chips.
I'm pretty sick of paying higher insurance rates for the vast majority of my fellow citizens inability to eat somewhat healthy.
A friend of mine had a great idea regarding food stamps… make them only eligible for store brand foods or foods where no store brand exists and then embed a discount on healthy foods and a penalty on unhealthy stuff. Food stamps represent tax payer money already so I doubt those who support lower taxes would have a problem with the building in incentives toward healthy eating. Not to mention research suggests that lower income people are more likely to be obese because unhealthy food is so much cheaper than healthy food so this would simultaneously lower healthcare expenses.