Hannaford and the Guiding Stars

There's an article in the Periscope section of the November 12 Newsweek that interested me. The topic is the Guiding Stars program that is being rolled out at Hannaford Brothers, a 161 store supermarket chain in New England.

Using experts from institutions like Harvard and Tufts, Hannaford devised a system of stars to designate the nutritional value of all the foods in their stores. Most food has no stars--which is a serious indictment of our food system!--but the better stuff is rated one (good), two (better) or three star (best).

For the most part I'm quite willing to wallow in bad food, like the 72% of items that receive no stars in the Hannaford system, but it's nice to know that should I want to eat healthier there's a system being worked on to make the decision easier. Hannaford is owned by the Delhaize Group which is a Belgium based international food retailer. This system of rating food value by stars is being implemented by other chains in the Delhaize Group--next year it's being rolled out in the Food Lion chain which has 1,300 stores--and is starting to be copied by competitors. Soon it'll be everywhere.

According to the Newsweek article, over the past year since the system was rolled out, sales of higher rated items have steadily climbed whereas lower rated items have fallen. Despite my preference for nasty junk food, I really like this system and applaud the Hannaford chain for developing it.