WASHINGTON — Walk down the aisles of any grocery store, and you’ll likely find a confused customer starring at shelves stacked with countless options of cereals, snack foods, yogurts or sweets, many of which claim to be “all natural,” “preservative-free” or “locally-made.”
How does one go about choosing the best product? A national nonprofit wants to make the choice easier.
The Environmental Working Group launched Food Scores Monday. The database and mobile app contain more than 80,000 products from 1,500 commonly-found brands in a searchable online format. It scores each product from 1 to 10 (1 being the best and 10 being the worst) based on its nutritional values, ingredients of concern (additives and contaminants) and the degree to which the food has been processed.
“It’s a sense that more and more Americans are concerned about what might be in their food when they buy it at the supermarket,” says Ken Cook, president and co- founder of Environmental Working Group.
“And it’s a sense that we think is shared by many Americans is that we can’t really trust food companies to let us know exactly what’s in food or to communicate that in a way that is easy for consumers to understand.”
A simple search for “crackers” takes the Food Scores user to a page of cracker categories (graham crackers, kids’ crackers, sandwich crackers, etc.) and to a list of 1,838 products that match the search term, each with a score to rate the product.
No crackers receive the best score, 1, and only one cracker has the next best score, 4 — Late July Mini Peanut Butter Crackers. Eleven products receive the worst rating, 10, including Nabisco Ritz Bits Cracker Sandwiches Kickin’ Cheddar. What puts this product at the bottom of the rankings?
Food Scores says the Ritz cracker sandwich contains food additives of moderate concern, ingredients known to be a source of unhealthy man-made trans fats, synthetic food dyes, the non-specific ingredient “flavor,” a high level of saturated fat and ingredient(s) derived from animals that were possibly treated with antibiotics.
A second search, this time for yogurt, results in nine products with a score of 1, 13 products with a score of 2 and 83 products with a score of 3.
Cook says only 18 percent of the 80,000 foods in the database land in the “most desirable” zone, which is between 1 and 3.5. About 57 percent of the products score in the middle range of 4 to 7, and 25 percent of products score between 8 and 10.
“What we see when we look at the American food landscape is in some cases encouraging, there are a lot of companies that are producing terrific products out there, but in many cases what we see in aisle after aisle of the supermarket doesn’t really qualify, in our view, almost as food,” Cook says.
“It’s a series of package products that contain salt, sugar and other ingredients that often have very little to do with nourishment, and everything to do with exactly what Americans want to avoid.”
Cook says the database is targeted at those who are concerned about what they eat, but don’t always have the time to pour over the fine print on labels and compare products.
The Food Scores mobile app for iPhone, which is free to download, allows consumers to scan barcodes of products in the grocery store with a smartphone, get the score of the product and compare it to other similar products. The Environmental Working Group has a similar database for cosmetics and personal care products, called Skin Deep.
In response to the launch of Food Scores, the Grocery Manufacturers Association released a statement, calling the ratings “severely flawed.”
“The addition of EWG’s rating scheme to the already crowded landscape of subjective food rating systems underscores the importance of fact-based sources like the government regulated Nutrition Facts Panel and ingredient list as consumers’ best source for consistent, reliable information about food and beverage products,” the statement says.
“The best advice for consumers seeking to achieve and maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle is to follow the federal government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which include eating a variety of foods as recommended by ChooseMyPlate.gov combined with regular physical activity to create an overall healthy lifestyle.”
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