A Look at the "Guiding Stars" Rating System
There’s a war going on in America’s fast-food nation and consumers will determine who wins. The battle was originally engaged around portion sizes, brought to a head by the film, “Super Size Me” in 2004.1 That battle line remains drawn and active with outlets like TGI Friday’s attracting customers to its new “right size” menu.2 McDonald’s, on the other hand, remains nutritionally schizophrenic, pushing salads on the one hand and a new 89-cent, 410-calorie, 42-ounce drink called “Hugo” on the other.3
Credit goes to the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services, which rang the alarms in 2001 and 2002 that obesity, particularly among children, was epidemic.4,5 Over the prior three decades, the percentage of U.S. children between six and eleven years old with obesity had risen from 4 percent to 13 percent, and the rate in 12 to 19 year olds from 5 percent to 14 percent.4,5 These government agencies made it clear that being obese did not make you a bad person, but it did virtually guarantee bad health, with higher than normal rates of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory problems, strokes, arthritis, gallbladder disease, and some cancers.6
While portions were an early focus in the battle, it was well understood by most that the problem in the United States was more fundamental than that. It wasn’t just quantity, it was quality as well. The debate over the past three years has moved from the question, “how much should I eat?” to “what should I eat?” – and more importantly, “what’s in my food?” A landmark work in 2006 by New York Times columnist Michael Pollan, revealed that our grain and meat based, factory-built modern American diet, trumpeted in the center aisles of most super markets, had been infiltrated and dominated by high calorie corn. In both our solid and liquid diets, without our knowledge, we were essentially, in a variety of disguised shapes, sizes, and colors, “eating corn, and washing it down with more corn.”7
Our lack of knowledge was not simply a function of our rushed, out-of-balance, multi-tasking culture which encourages “eating on the run,” nor simply the result of our own disinterest and passivity when it comes to food and health. Rather, it was driven, to a large extent, by misinformation, and massive marketing that hijacked the words “health,” “balance,” “light” and “good for you,” and aligned them with products that clearly were making us ill.8
The government responded with better labels, and earnest efforts, but in truth, they were outgunned by manufacturers, who managed to maintain enough confusion and complexity to keep American families in the dark – at least until now.
This month a grocery store chain, started by Arthur Hannaford 125 years ago in Maine, declared success.9 One year ago, the Hannaford Brothers Company, with 155 stores in the northeast and 26,000 employees, said “enough is enough.” As the region’s largest certified organic supermarket, and a U.S Environmental Protection Agency Merit Award winner, it believed its customers deserved better nutritional support and that the food packaging confused more than it helped.10 So the company put together an advisory committee made up of top-notch academic experts from Dartmouth, Tufts, Harvard, University of North Carolina, University of California and the University of Southern Maine and charged them to create a grading system for food that was trustworthy and easy to use.10
The result was “Guiding Stars,” a “rating formula that credits a food’s score for the presence of vitamins, minerals, fiber and whole grains and debits a food’s score for the presence of trans or saturated fats, cholesterol, added sugar and added sodium.”10 The more positive the attributes, the more stars, with three being the top rating. The next step? Hannaford rated 25,500 products and found that only 28% received one star or more. Many products marketed by manufacturers as “healthy” received no stars. The chain then set about educating their customers about the system. One year later, 81% are aware of the program, and over half use it regularly.9
But did the system change purchasing behavior? Kelly Brownell, a nutrition expert at Yale, said thinking you could succeed with good consumers would be optimistic since you are “competing in an environment that provides massive inducement to unhealthy foods.”9 But advisory board member Lisa Sutherland, an assistant professor of pediatrics and nutrition science, says the results of the first year of data “were pretty much what I would have expected with an objective system that wasn’t designed to promote or negate one food or another.”9
In short, the system worked. Here are the results of the changes in buying habits of Hannaford customers over a 12-month span.9
1) Customers bought leaner cuts of meat. Sales of ground beef with stars increased 7% and beef without stars declined 5%. Starred chicken was up 5%, unstarred declined 3%.
2) Three star fat-free milk increased 1% while no-star whole milk declined 4%.
3) The greatest shifts in behavior were in the center aisle packaged goods. Those with stars grew at 2 ½ times the pace of those without stars. Breakfast cereals with stars increased 3 ½ times those without, and starred frozen dinners outpaced un-starred sales by 4 ½ times. Company spokeswoman Caren Epstein was especially pleased with packaged aisle results. As she said, “People already know that fruits and vegetables are good for them. When you are looking at 100 different cereals, that’s where you need help.”9
A patent is pending on the Guiding Star System and hopefully it will soon be in a supermarket near you. Until then, here are two things to remember. First, the problem with our American diet involves both quantity and quality. Second, just because PepsiCo names something “Smart Spot” or Kraft labels an item “Sensible Solution” doesn’t guarantee that these products are good for you. We consumers need to use our brains, being both smart and sensible. And the companies who are pushing the stuff the hardest aren’t necessarily the ones to choose as your “nutritional best friends.”
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