Food Trouble

November 6, 2006

It's been more than a week since Andy Weil and his healthful Life & Wellness chums left town, leaving behind some big nutritional, spiritual and behavioral religion. Still, something tells me that Weil, of Tucson, Ariz., doesn't really have to deal with the challenges of living in a town where the predominant food source is a supermarket.

And as if to rub salt in an already touchy subject (sea salt preferred), here comes the New York Times, reporting that a new study, by an grocery outfit called 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," the Times reported.

Here's the rest of the story:

"These included V8 vegetable juice (too much sodium), Campbell'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."

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