NuVal: Getting More Nutrition for Your Food Dollar

In our March 23 post we introduced Dr. David Katz of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center. Dr. Katz and his colleagues have developed a rating system for foods, not just the tomato and the egg, but also most of the packaged and processed food found on grocery store shelves. The NuVal labeling system is being sold to stores throughout the country as a way of promoting better health. Each food item has a NuVal score as part of the price tag, right out there where it is easy to see.

Vitamins, minerals, omega 3 fatty acids, and fiber raise a food’s score. Saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sugar, and salt lower it. Oranges, blueberries, green beans, and broccoli score 100. Apples come in at 96. One percent milk scores 88. Pepperidge Farm whole grain bread is 37, Crunchy Cheetos are a 4, and butter and brown sugar score 1. A few of the scores—enough to give you an idea how the system works—are posted on the NuVal website.

In the development of this system researchers compared the health of people who, over time, ate high-scoring foods against those who ate many of the low scoring items. High scorers had better health outcomes than those whose foods scored low. This article gives details.

The NuVal website encourages buyers to trade up, that is, switch from the bread that scores 28 to the more nutritious whole grain high fiber bread that scores 76. A sugary orange breakfast drink scoring 35 could be traded up for Tropicana Ruby Red grapefruit juice that scores 82. In a store that has the NuVal labels, these switches are made easy.

We couldn’t find a local store in our area that has bought the NuVal system and are hoping it will come soon. Meanwhile, the information on the NuVal website can point us in the right direction.

In our research for this article we did discover Safeway’s Simple Nutrition food labels. More about that in a future post.