Wal-Mart rolls out healthy food icon

Marlys Miller, Editor, Pork Magazine
Wal-Mart Stores, the nation's largest food retailer, is helping customers identify healthy food options with its “Great For You” icon. Rolled out on Tuesday, the icon and labeling program is part of the company’s healthier food initiative launched in January 2011.
Wal-Mart’s objective is to “help our customers instantly identify food options that are better for them.” The green-and-white icon will appear on Wal-Mart’s Great Value and Marketside items, as well as fresh and packaged fruits and vegetables, at stores nationwide this spring,” according to the company’s website. The effort will make it easier for customers to build healthier diets, officials say.
The icon also will be applied to lean meats and low-fat dairy products, and will be made available to national brand products that meet the qualifying criteria.
"Walmart moms are telling us they want to make healthier choices for their families, but need help deciphering all the claims and information already displayed on products," says Andrea Thomas, senior vice president of sustainability at Walmart. "Our 'Great For You' icon provides customers with an easy way to quickly identify healthier food choices."
Items carrying the icon must meet rigorous nutrition criteria compiled by the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), USDA and Institute of Medicine (IOM). The "Great For You" nutrition criteria was developed by consulting with food and nutrition experts from the public and private sectors as well as leading health organizations, according to Wal-Mart officials. That information is available for review here.
The science-based criteria use a two-step process:

• Step one focuses on encouraging people to eat more fruits, vegetables, fiber-rich whole grains, low-fat dairy, nuts and seeds and lean meats. Such examples include brown rice, 1 percent milk, raw almonds and 93 percent lean ground beef and meats.
• Step two limits the amount of total, trans and saturated fats, sodium and added sugars in items such as sweetened oatmeal, granola bars, flavored yogurt and frozen meals.

 “The criteria have undergone an extensive evaluation process using thousands of grocery items to help ensure that only nutritious items in each grocery category receive the ‘Great For You’ icon,” Wal-Mart officials point out. For example, one evaluation compared Wal-Mart's criteria with what people in America commonly consume using the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of more than 4,000 food items.
The "Great For You" icon is part of Wal-Mart’s overall healthier food initiative, which includes these key components:

• Reformulating packaged food items by working with suppliers to reduce sodium and added sugars and removing all remaining industrially produced trans fats. Wal-Mart has been working on reducing sodium and sugars in 165 food items; some examples are 15 percent sodium reduction in Great Value ketchup and canned vegetables.
•  Making healthier food more affordable-- The company has reduced or eliminated price premiums on more than 350 better-for-you items, such as low-sodium lunch meat, reduced-fat peanut butter and fat-free salad dressing.
• Providing solutions to address food deserts by building stores--  The company has pledged to open 275 to 300 stores by 2016 in areas identified as food deserts. Since July 2011, Wal-Mart has opened 23 stores in such areas and anticipates opening 50 to 60 more in 2012.
• Increasing charitable support for nutrition programs-- In the past year, Wal-Mart and its Foundation more than $13 million in grants to nutrition education programs, including Monday’s announcement of $9.5 million to groups such as Share Our Strength and the National 4-H Council. Estimates are to reach nearly 300,000 individuals this year.

"When it comes to food, our customers want a variety of choices, but they also want help identifying healthier options. Customers asked us to make healthier food choices easy while keeping prices low," says Jack Sinclair, executive vice president of grocery for Walmart. "The nutritionists we engaged told us to make the criteria tough and significant. We feel confident the 'Great For You' icon balances those objectives.”
More information on "Great For You" and nutrition criteria, is available here.
Source: Wal-Mart Stores,



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