NuVal

Last week while grocery shopping, a brochure caught my eye. It was for something called NuVal which sounds like some type of gimmicky product. After several days, I finally got around to reading it.

What is NuVal? Apparently, it is a new scoring system for foods. Currently, it is debuting at the stores Price Chopper, HyVee, and Meijer. The premise of the scoring system is to rate the health of food products based on a scale of 1-100, 1 having the least nutrition and 100 the most nutrition. The idea is that this simple system (like an at-a-glance) will help enable consumers to make informed decisions about the foods they buy as well as give an ability to compare products based on price and nutrition.

The NuVal scoring system is based on the Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI) algorithm which considers over 30 nutrients and takes into account trans fats, quality of macronutrients, and the density of food products. The development of the NuVal system itself is headed by Dr. David Katz, an Associate Professor of Public Health at Yale University School of Medicine, along with 12 other experts in medicine, nutrition, and public health. Their goal is to havea NuVal score for the over 50,000 food products in an average store. One nice thing is that this is independently funded, so there is no promotion by manufacturers or other food companies.

In general, I think this is an interesting approach to take, much better than displaying calories on menus, billboards, etc. In the "Nutritional Insights" section of the website, it emphasizes that there are no "good" or "bad" NuVal scores--that it's just an objective tool. It makes the point that you don't have to buy the highest NuVal score, but rather that you may simply choose a product because you love it. That's actually an important statement for me to read as I have a tendency to base my food choices on the highest value of nutrition versus just taste. (post here on health versus instinct)

It will be interesting to see how this works and whether consumers catch on to using this system. There does seem to be more of an educational aspect here than just good calories and bad calories.

What is your opinion? Could this be a valuable tool for consumers and their food choices? Would/will you use this system?

Asian food labels, Calories, and their significance?

Last week, I headed to the Asian supermarket. I go once about every 3-4 months, all depending on when I run out of this: Yes, kimchi! It's probably one of my favorite foods. I'm not the typical Korean, eating it for every meal, just dinner, along with my other veggies, rice/noodles, and protein.

While I was there, I picked up other items, like noodles, sweet wild rice, crackers, sauces, frozen potstickers, bean paste products, and even some whole sardines! (for the dogs not me) Who knew sardines came in other sizes than just those ones you see canned? :grin:

The majority of items there have labels both in Asian and English languages. However, I was thinking about this very thing. I used to love to try all the different Asian ramen noodles there. They are much tastier than the standard supermarket kind. I used to buy 5 or 6 different types--everything from kimchi flavor to sesame to even green tea! That was until I read the actual food label. As I've mentioned before, my ED descent led me to a life of being fat-phobic. So I was naturally appalled at how many fat grams this 4-5 oz package of noodles had. Well, that was the end of that, and I never touched those specific noodles again, rather opting for something like soba noodles which were less calorific.

Then, I was thinking, what if all my food items were only with Asian food labels, like this one below.
I say this, because I cannot read Asian characters. Would this make a difference, or would it backfire and just cause me more anxiety not knowing how much a certain food item was? I mean, what if I were stuck on some island like all those people in Lost and had to forage for myself? (The Lost people did find normal, packaged foods which they lived off of for awhile) Would I be thinking about calories then?

This led me to think about the actual history of the "Calorie." (kcal) How did it become to play such a significant role in how we eat, diet, and exercise?

According to this brief article in the Journal of Nutrition, it really wasn't until 1887 when chemist Wilbur Atwater published a paper about the "Calorie" relating to food energy that the concept even arose. Atwater used the calorimeter as away to measure the energy in food. In this case, the Calorie is the amount of heat produced when a food is burned to dry powder or ash.

It wasn't until about two decades later that the idea behind calories with dieting hit mainstream. Prior to this, we could say "modern" dieting began with the likes of William Banting in England, forerunner of the Atkins plan, Sylvester Graham, inventor of the Graham cracker who believed in strict vegetarianism, and Horace Fletcher, aka the "Great Masticator" who felt everyone must chew their food something like 32 times before swallowing. None of these men said people should eat X amount of calories.

That is until Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters published her book, Diet and Health, the key to the Calories in 1918. This is considered the first modern diet book where counting calories became the key to weight reduction. The book gives a formula to find ideal body weight, sort of a forerunner to the BMI configuration. She also includes advice on how many calories one should eat based on their ideal body weight with an analysis of macronutrient information. Dr. Hunt, surprisingly, did not promote diet aids nor saccharine.

However, she was apparently not shy to tell readers that dieting was hard work, a life-long commitment, where vigilance was required--that dieting was based on self-discipline. Some have credited her with starting the idea that being overweight is a moral sign of weakness. Despite this, the book proved to be successful, selling somwhere between 800,000 and 2 million copies.

After this book, there came others who emphasized food combinations and when to eat certain foods. Some even mentioned "magic pairs" of foods to eat. During this time (1920s and beyond), there were also many substances touted as the miracle cure for obesity (hmm, that one hasn't changed a bit, has it?), as well as an array of diet plans.

So ladies and gentlemen, that's a brief overview of how the Calorie came about in the role of dieting. It's quite amazing when you think about how much "clout" we give to a simple word, a simple measurement of heat in science, isn't it?

Other Sources:
The history of diets
The history of dieting
When did dieting begin?
Lulu Hunt Peters and the birth of the modern diet book

*Note--I'm still working up to eating those Korean ramen noodles with much more than my usual alloted fat grams.

Coca-cola slammed by FDA

In 2007, Coca-Cola marketed the Diet Coke Plus with a tagline of "a good source of vitamins B3, B6, and B12, and the minerals zinc and magnesium." Now, the FDA has issued a warning letter to Coke for their "mislabeling of it claims.

The "plus" to a product can only be used if the product has at least 10% or more of the Reference Daily Intake or Reference Daily Value. Apparently, Diet Coke Plus's nutrient content fell short on this. The FDA also said in their letter that they felt it wasn't appropriate to fortify snacks like carbonated beverages.

Truly, this doesn't surprise me. Soft drink companies and alike continuously try to reach sales of their products by adding new marketing schemes. I no longer drink soft drinks, but I keep coming back to those who do and wondering whether people really believe you can get sufficient vitamins and minerals from these substances.

Fortification, in general, has been around for a long time. Most notably, cereals are on the most fortified products, however, I'm seeing a lot of other nutrients added to products. For example, omega-3 is now available in some yogurt. Fiber is now in splenda! Tell me how
that one makes sense? With each fortification, strict rules apply in accordance to the FDA
guidelines. And even with the correct labeling, it can still leave consumers confused.

Source: Scientific American

Should nutrition facts be brought back to Harvard?

Laura at the blog Are you "eating with your anorexic?" posted about the Ivy League college Harvard University removing calorie information at their dining services. Apparently, not everyone is happy with these actions and published their own opinion in this piece. I think the author raises some interesting points, though each could be counter pointed.

The issue of providing calorie information has been a hot topic of debate for awhile now with those adamantly against it, others for it, and some who sit on the fence. In the end, there will never be 100% happiness with the policy.

Nutrition labels will get revamped

Here's an interesting article on the new nutritional labeling happening next year. Although it's a good thing, people have a hard time reading nutrition labels as it is. Plus, half of them are incorrect when you do the actual mathematical calculations. Perhaps, it will be helpful, but I am not holding my breath on it.