King City, CA: Grocery Stores Starting To Roll Out Nutritional Information On Products: View From A Private Duty Caregiver Serving Carmel, Carmel Valley, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Gilroy, Gonzalez, Greenfield, Hollister, King City, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Salinas, San Juan Bautista, Seaside And Soledad California
At Family inHome Caregiving, we stress to our senior Clients the importance of exercise, social interaction and a good diet. The latter, however, is easier said than done. Many people have no idea how much salt and fat is in some packaged foods, and reading the label gets more challenging the older one gets. I was happy to see an article in USA Today on Tuesday which talked about one supermarket called King Soopers which rolled out nutrition ratings developed by a company called NuVal. It has a large label under the item with a numeric score for nutritional value. Plain yogurt, for instance, received a score of 100 while one of the myriad flavored yogurts next to it (French vanilla€"sounds healthy, right?) scored just 39. This is a great idea, making it easy for those without perfect eye sight an easy way to compare like products without spending an hour in the supermarket reading labels. "It's been very well-received by our customers," Kelli McGannon, a spokesperson for King Soopers told USA Today. Between NuVal and one of its competitors (Guiding Stars), these labels are now in 3,000 supermarkets, but that's not enough. Many stores prefer the NuVal system, which provides a rating of between 1-100, to that of Guiding Stars, which uses a more simple system of 1-3 stars. I hope that NuVal is successful in selling this product nationwide to the big chains. It certainly makes a lot of sense. This is particularly true for many seniors, who struggle to keep their heart healthy and ward off medical conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure which can be caused in part by too much sugar and salt in the diet. In October, the Institute of Medicine released two reports recommending that the federal government develop a nutrition rating system that would appear on the front of food packages. It concluded that a point system should be developed and that calories, saturated and trans fats, sugar and sodium amounts be displayed on the front of food package. As is usually the case, however, the government is studying that matter and it could be some time before this becomes a reality. In the meantime, let's hope that a store near you signs a deal with NuVal soon.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/story/2012-01-09/grocery-stores-rate-foods-nutritional-value/52473432/1
About Richard Kuehn & Family inHome Caregiving of Monterey:
After more than a decade of caregiving, both in a professional environment and for a 97 year old family member I was dissatisfied with service from local caregiving agencies. I became convinced of the need for a service which provides very personal assistance to elderly and founded Family inHome Caregiving serving the Monterey Peninsula. Please visit my blog where I talk about important senior issues at:
http://www.familyinhomecaregiving.com/Blog
At Family inHome Caregiving, we stress to our senior Clients the importance of exercise, social interaction and a good diet. The latter, however, is easier said than done. Many people have no idea how much salt and fat is in some packaged foods, and reading the label gets more challenging the older one gets. I was happy to see an article in USA Today on Tuesday which talked about one supermarket called King Soopers which rolled out nutrition ratings developed by a company called NuVal. It has a large label under the item with a numeric score for nutritional value. Plain yogurt, for instance, received a score of 100 while one of the myriad flavored yogurts next to it (French vanilla€"sounds healthy, right?) scored just 39. This is a great idea, making it easy for those without perfect eye sight an easy way to compare like products without spending an hour in the supermarket reading labels. "It's been very well-received by our customers," Kelli McGannon, a spokesperson for King Soopers told USA Today. Between NuVal and one of its competitors (Guiding Stars), these labels are now in 3,000 supermarkets, but that's not enough. Many stores prefer the NuVal system, which provides a rating of between 1-100, to that of Guiding Stars, which uses a more simple system of 1-3 stars. I hope that NuVal is successful in selling this product nationwide to the big chains. It certainly makes a lot of sense. This is particularly true for many seniors, who struggle to keep their heart healthy and ward off medical conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure which can be caused in part by too much sugar and salt in the diet. In October, the Institute of Medicine released two reports recommending that the federal government develop a nutrition rating system that would appear on the front of food packages. It concluded that a point system should be developed and that calories, saturated and trans fats, sugar and sodium amounts be displayed on the front of food package. As is usually the case, however, the government is studying that matter and it could be some time before this becomes a reality. In the meantime, let's hope that a store near you signs a deal with NuVal soon.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/story/2012-01-09/grocery-stores-rate-foods-nutritional-value/52473432/1
About Richard Kuehn & Family inHome Caregiving of Monterey:
After more than a decade of caregiving, both in a professional environment and for a 97 year old family member I was dissatisfied with service from local caregiving agencies. I became convinced of the need for a service which provides very personal assistance to elderly and founded Family inHome Caregiving serving the Monterey Peninsula. Please visit my blog where I talk about important senior issues at:
http://www.familyinhomecaregiving.com/Blog
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