Score your food

A new United Supermarkets partnership might make it harder to casually toss Twinkies in your grocery cart.

The Lubbock chain has joined with NuVal Nutritional Scoring System to add nutritional scores to the shelf price labels of products in its Colleyville and Frisco Market Street stores. (See the "31" on the hotdog-bun shelf tag?)

Plans call for the nutritional program to be rolled out to all United Supermarkets, Market Streets and Amigos stores across Texas by the end of the year.

United calls the program a means of helping guests cut through confusing nutrition information to make educated decisions about food quickly.

The NuVal scores food between one and 100. The higher the score, the better a product's nutrient value. A team of nutrition and medical experts developed the NuVal rating system, without retailer or manufacturer influence, according to a statements of both companies. (It's probably just as well that I loaded this photo too small for you to read the NuVal scores for candy bars.)

The NuVal system recently received official endorsement from the American College of Preventative Medicine.

Dr. Mark B. Johnson, ACPM president, said the system could help people to make better food choices.

“We believe that arming consumers with easy-to understand, at-a-glance, information about the nutritional quality of the food they purchase, at the point of purchase, can have a significant impact on changing their eating behaviors,” Johnson said.

NuVal scoring fits with United's "Living Well" campaign and its participation as a founding member of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation.

The foundation has declared a mission of reducing obesity by 2015, and members have committed more than $20 million to the joint initiative to raise awareness about the importance of balancing a healthy diet with physical activity.

Find out more on the foundation's facebook page. NuVal's got a facebook, too.