A new system for scoring the nutritional value of foods will find its way to grocery store shelves next year, the latest attempt to come up with a standard way to make healthier food choices. The Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI) was developed by a group of nutrition and health experts, led by David Katz, chairman of the Yale Prevention Research Center.
ONQI takes into account a number of factors in assigning a score of 1 to 100 for each food, including negatives like the amount of saturated fat, sugar and cholesterol in a food, and positives like fiber, nutrients, omega 3 fatty acids and the quality of the proteins.
The system will be introduced to grocery stores across the US in 2008 by Topco Associates LLC, a grocery distribution and services co-operative owned by a number of independent grocers, including Wegmans, IGA, Hy-Vee and Food City, Topco said. The grocers that own Topco own about 13,000 stores.
The grocers are not obligated to use the scoring system, but it will be made available to them. "You really shouldn't need a PhD in nutritional biochemistry to figure out which kids' breakfast cereal is healthier," Katz told Reuters during an interview this week.