Andrea Weckerle

"More Kiwi" from Matt Linehan

“I have long believed that prevention and wellness are the keys to solving our health-care crisis. We must recreate America as a “wellness society” focused on fitness, good nutrition and disease prevention—ultimately, keeping people out of the hospital in the first place. You paved the way for a lot of people, and this is something I have been laboring on for a long time.  We don’t have a health-care system in America; we have a “sick care” system. The problem is that this current system is all about patching things up after the fact.” – recent statement by Sen. Tom Harkin

Fortunately, the importance of preventive health care is gaining traction among the medical community, government and business leaders, and the public at large. Increasingly more people are educating themselves about how to lead healthy lives, and are doing so at a time when there is an immense amount of legitimate and free information about health and illness prevention available online.

Nutritional know-how is a vital component of illness and disease prevention, and these days consumers have an unprecedented opportunity to take their nutritional health into their own hands and develop true nutritional intelligence. Learning the basics, let’s call it Nutrition 101, is a good starting point, and that means knowing what carbohydrates, fats and proteins, vitamins and dietary minerals are, and how they impact and interact within the human body. Making wise choices regarding what foods to eat is another important component of nutritional intelligence. But although most consumers know that there are healthier and less healthy foods to chose from, and are becoming literate in reading food labels, comparing one food item against another can seem daunting.

While not a substitute for trying to keep up with the latest studies and findings in the nutrition field, comparing foods will likely become easier with the newly-launched NuVal Nutritional Scoring System. Although there are several other food labeling systems in place (for a good historical overview of American food and nutrition labeling, see Fooducate’s post), NuVal™ gets points for being easy to use – with a scoring system of 1 to 100 (100 being the highest), consumers can now compare items both within and across categories.

The scoring system takes into account more than 30 different nutrients and nutrition factors.  Nutrients with generally favorable effects are placed in the numerator (fiber, folate, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B6, potassium, calcium, zinc, omega-3 fatty acids, total bioflavanoids, total carotenoids, magnesium and iron), while nutrients with generally unfavorable effects on health are placed in the denominator (saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, sugar and cholesterol). Another positive aspect of NuVal™ is that, while its goal is to provide a nutritional score for every one of the more than 50,000 products found in the average grocery store, its Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI™) algorithm underlying the scoring system was created independent of manufacturers and other similarly interested parties.