Hy-Vee, Osco to start grading foods

As attentive shoppers might have noticed, one of the city’s larger grocery store chains is now scoring certain food items — on a scale of one to 100 — based on healthiness.

The dozen metro Hy-Vees have adapted the NuVal nutritional scoring system, one of several systems slowly being introduced around the country to help shoppers make more informed decisions.

Each system has its own grading scale. In the fall, Osco plans to introduce Nutrition IQ, which ranks food into color categories — i.e. foods with a yellow tag are a good source of protein. The Guiding Star system in place at the East Coast chain Food Lion simply assigns a food one to three stars, with the rankings being good, better and best. Kroger, which owns the Dillon’s chain popular in Leavenworth and Lawrence, is also considering the NuVal system.

Labeling certain foods as healthy has been a popular idea for years.