Food Rating Systems, Judging Nutrition With A Glance: ONQI vs. NNR

To Eat or Not to Eat: Is There a Better Way To Understand Food Labels and Determine Your Best Foods for Weight Loss and Healthy Meal Planning? What are the ONQI and NNR systems?

Food rating systems can help take the confusion out of making healthy food decisions:

There’s not one magazine, website, or morning news program that hasn’t featured a list of best foods to lose weight with. So much so, that it seems every week we’re hearing about the latest superfoods and must-eats for a healthy weight loss diet.

To make matters worse, manufacturers start hopping on the bandwagon, adding some form of these foods to their products. Then they process them in various (and often unhealthy) ways adding very little nutritional value, if not utterly destroying it. But this can be hard to notice unless we stand in the aisle comparing label after label.

What’s more, when it comes to choosing the best foods to lose weight with and live by, is it possible or even sensible to eat the same foods all the time, superfoods or not?

All of this can make choosing the best foods for a healthy diet confusing and tiresome.

There must be another way…

An Effective Food Rating System Can Help Make Every Calorie Count:

The one thing that most, if not all, superfoods have in common is that they are nutrient-dense. This means that in relation to their amount of calories (which includes carbs and fat) they are also high in various nutrients, whether it be certain vitamins, antioxidants, phytonutrients, minerals, fiber, even protein in some cases. Another phrase to describe nutrient dense is nutrient rich.

Superfoods aside, there are always foods that are more nutritious than others, including prepackaged and processed foods, and everyday we have to make choices. This is where food rating systems can be useful.

Food rating systems consider various factors, including calorie content, to determine nutrient density and assign foods a value (rating). This makes it easier to compare different products with a glance.

For example, let’s say we’re in the mood for ice cream. We look on the shelves and see that one brand of all-natural vanilla is ranked highly, and a second brand of low-fat vanilla is ranked lower. Although in an instant we may have assumed the low-fat version to be the healthier choice, we now know that the all-natural one has a higher nutrient density. Looking at the labels, we might notice that the low-fat brand has more total calories because of added sugar.

Another example is if we’re in the aisle deciding on which pasta to purchase, and our families will only eat plain, white pasta. Well, we can at least choose the brand that has the most nutrients for the calories.

In everyday decisions like these, an effective food rating system can help us make every calorie count.

There are at least two food rating systems for nutrient density that we can put to use right now: The ONQI and NNR.

The ONQI system (Overall Quality Nutrition Index) is also called the NuVal system. NuVal’s formula for ranking foods, ONQI, was developed by a team of nutrition and medical experts led by Dr. David Katz and entirely funded by Griffin Hospital, a non-profit community and teaching affiliate of the Yale University School of Medicine. Seeing as it was created without the intervention of food retailing or manufacturing industries, it is also unbiased.

NuVal’s unique position of being unaffiliated with any particular food industry makes their rating system incredibly useful. Unlike other rating systems, which focus on whole, raw foods, NuVal also applies their ONQI to processed foods, from frozen vegetables to cakes and cookies, one brand to another.

NuVal’s rating system is very straightforward: 0-100.

Foods with a ranking of 0 have the lowest nutrition density, and foods with 100 have the highest. It doesn’t necessarily label foods as “good” or “bad” either. Rather, it allows for more nutrient rich choices within food categories and across food categories, which will help optimize overall nutrition when planning meals or attempting to lose weight in a healthy manner.

These Factors Raise the NuVal Score:

• Fiber
• Folate
• Vitamin A
• Vitamin C
• Vitamin D
• Vitamin E
• Vitamin B12
• Vitamin B6
• Potassium
• Calcium
• Zinc
• Omega-3 fatty acids
• Total bioflavanoids
• Total carotenoids
• Magnesium
• Iron

These lower the NuVal score:

• Saturated fat
• Trans fat
• Sodium
• Sugar
• Cholesterol

Other Factors Affecting the NuVal score:

• Fat quality
• Protein quality
• Glycemic load (a better measure than glycemic index)
• Overall Nutrient Density (Higher nutrient content and lower calories also raises scores.)

The creators of NuVal are still adding foods to their lists (and probably will be for many years) but they do have scores for a number of products available to consumers now. Here is the link:

http://www.nuval.com/pages/WhatAreScores.aspx

Here’s another link with NuVal cookie scores and calories.

Naturally Nutrient Rich Score (NNR score):

This rating system is still being refined and its researchers are working closely with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to create what may become a national system. In fact, the USDA makes direct reference to the NNR website in conjunction with its dietary guidelines. The NNR, instead of offering scores by brand and product, offers consumers a recommended shopping list of nutrient-rich whole foods. Here is the link to this list:

http://www.nutrientrichfoods.org/living_nutrient_rich/nutrient_rich_shopping_list.html

This excerpt from their site, describes their background:

The Nutrient Rich Foods Coalition is a partnership that brings together leading scientific researchers, communications experts and agricultural commodities. Our members are composed of 12 food commodity associations that represent the five basic MyPyramid food groups.

The nutrient dense, or “nutritionally rich” food categories used in the NNR rating system are aligned with the USDA’s Dietary Guideline’s definition of a “healthy diet” and the MyPyramid’s five food groups. In other words, they factor in nutrients according to established dietary guidelines.

They don’t offer actual ratings for consumers to use, but rather recommend various whole foods grouped according to the food pyramid. These guidelines are very general and unfortunately make no comparisons between specific products. This may, in part, be explained by their alignment with commodity associations (National Dairy Council and Wheat Foods Council for example).

Here is the link to a description of the NNR Coalition:

http://www.nutrientrichfoods.org/about_nrfc/index.html

Yet the NNR is still a good general guide for finding which whole foods can add high quality nutrient content to your diet.

Basic Recommendations of the NNR Index Include:

• Brightly colored fruits and 100% fruit juices
• Vibrant colored vegetables and potatoes
• Whole, fortified and fiber-rich grain foods
• Low-fat and fat-free milk, cheese and yogurt
• Lean meat, poultry, fish, eggs, beans and nuts

Additonal References:
1. Department of Health and Human Services/US Department of Agriculture. Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005. Accessed December 1, 2005.

Technorati Tags: ONQI, NNR, Food rating systems, lose weight

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