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.

A tag post script

Concerning why the rollout of a nutritional tag program to some United Supermarkets and not others (see this morning's post), the answer from spokesman Eddie Owens is simple.
"We had to start somewhere," he said.
The chain started with its "specialty" stores, which include the Market Street brand and some stores that are a hybrid of Market Street offerings and regular United stores.
That's why the Amarillo Market Street and the United at Southwest 45th Avenue and Bell Street got the nutrition tagging first.
"Now that the program is fully automated -- we originally had to do all the labeling by hand, and you can imagine what a nightmare that was -- we intend to roll it out, chainwide, as quickly as possible," Owens said.
"But that will take a considerable amount of time, still, due to the changeout of pricetags."

You are what you eat

And to help you know more about that, United Supermarkets has peppered aisles at selected other stores with nutritional tags.

The tags highlight foods that
meet gluten-free diets;

• are heart-healthy or for diabetes management;
• are lean or lowfat;
• are sugar-free or have reduced sugar content; or,
• meet organic standards.

Gluten Free products are marked with a blue tag. Heart-healthy/diabetes management products get a pink and purple label. You'll find an orange label on the lean and lowfat items.

United goes with pink again when it tags the sugar-free and reduced sugar foods. And it goes green with the label on the organics.

If it sounds like you'll need a map legend to shop, don't worry. United gives you one.

Customers who want more info about the tag program can interact with United dietitians online by submitting questions that will be featured on the chain's Health and Wellness web page or answered individually by e-mail. Names won't be posted with the questions. They'll be anonymous.

The one question not answered is why the program is being rolled out to the Amarillo Market Street United and a United Supermarket on Southwest 45th at Bell Street but not -- from what I can tell on the news release -- to other United stores here yet.

I'll see what I can find out.