Rating system for supermarket foods

by Nicole Weston (Subscribe to Nicole Weston's posts)
Posted Sep 9th 2006 10:03AM
Filed under: East Coast, Business, Stores & Shopping

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Hannaford Bros. operates 150 grocery stores in upstate New York and throughout New England and is implementing its own system, perhaps in lieu of a nutritionist at each location, to let customers know the nutritional value of the foods they're planning to buy. Their rating system assigns stars to food items based on USDA guidelines, adding points for nutrients and taking away for high levels of fats and sugars, but not taking calories into account. The system is:

1 star: good choice
2 stars: better choice
3 stars: best choice
0 stars: no nutritional value

The store stocks over 27,000 items and only 25% of them got one or more stars. Some staples, like cooking oil, were not evaluated. Is it a perfect system? No, but it does accomplish its goal of giving consumers a general idea of the nutritional value of foods without requiring "a nutrition degree to understand." A store survey said that 8 out of 10 customers wanted some form of nutritional guidance and they're trying to deliver it in a basic form.

Tags: east coast, health, market, new england, nutrition, nutritional, rate, ratings, supermarket

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9-09-2006 @ 5:40PM

Pamela Roza said...

I think this is a great idea. I love Hannafords. My husband is from Maine and we shop there every time we visit. I wish we had them in Florida. Their produce is much better than Publix - on the Whole Foods level, really, but priced at the Publix level. They appear to really think about how a customer shops when they layout the store, so I am not surprised to hear they are doing something like this.

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