The new Guiding Stars nutrition program at Loblaws has been useful to me, but I wish it had more stars. Nearly all fruit has three stars (the highest rating), but surely some fruits are more nutritious than others? On the other end of the scale, the lowest possible rating is zero stars, and the sample ratings on their website give goldfish crackers as an example of a zero star food. But the nutritional content of goldfish crackers isn't particularly bad, it just has no redeeming qualities. There are products on the shelves that have like 40% of your RDI of sodium or fat in a single serving (and that's a serving according to the black and white nutrition label, which is usually smaller than we'd normally eat in one sitting.) Surely those deserve a significantly lower rating than something that's simply empty calories?
I think the system would do better with a seven point scale, or even percentages. The three star system is a decent start, but it needs more nuance so as to not just tell us what we already know.
2 comments:
I guess they got carried away with the "keep it simple" mantra. Supposedly people find nutritional information confusing. I don't know if this is true, but it's something that is often repeated. I think Loblaws was acting on that, going for a stripped down system, and they over-did it.
What's an example of a one or two stars food?
White bread is one star. Some kinds of grainier bread are two star, and some kinds of grainier bread are three star. I think there are certain nutrition thresholds they have to pass. This one kind of flax bread (which I like less) is three star and this other kind (which I like more) is two star, but the differences on the black and white nutrition boxes are marginal.
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