Better Nutrition, Better Health

Making Healthy Food Choices

The foods we eat are more than just calories and flavor: They have a significant impact on our bodies and our well-being. In fact, the difference between good and bad health can be as simple as the foods you put on your family’s dinner table, the lunches you pack for school and the snacks you indulge in. What’s more, when you’re shopping on a budget, it can be quite a challenge to select foods that not only protect your bottom line, but pack a nutritional punch as well. With so much to choose from and so much information floating around, how do you know if you’re making the healthiest choices you can?

Our Health Crisis
The bottom line is that here in the United States, the average diet is too high in protein, fats and carbohydrates. Our love for convenience foods and super-sizing has led to a national health crisis — it’s estimated that almost 70 percent of adults in the U.S. are overweight or obese. Our poor national diet has led to skyrocketing rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other, often preventable, health problems. What’s the best way to reverse this troubling trend?

It’s Important to Eat Better, Healthier Foods.
The benefits of eating the right diet simply can’t be overstated. If you change your eating habits, you’ll reduce your chances of developing heart disease, diabetes and possibly even cancer. You’ll lower your risk of becoming overweight or obese. You’ll likely have more energy during the day and chances are you’ll sleep better at night. You might even help boost your brain power. Even when you start eating healthier after years of relatively poor nutrition, your body will start healing itself right away. The bottom line: give your body the kind
of fuel it needs and it will reward you with better health.

Of course, as with everything else, achieving a balanced diet is not as easy as it seems. Most of us have the best of intentions when it comes to eating right — but it can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to purchasing and serving the best, most nutritionally sound foods. Having good intentions is a great place to start, but it’s also important to become an educated consumer.

Knowing Where to Start
With thousands of different products lining the shelves, knowing which ones to select is key. Just about every label proclaims a different health benefit - High Fiber! Lower Sodium!

All Natural! - and it might seem as if simply following manufacturers’ suggestions is enough. But product labels can be confusing and difficult to read, and product claims can sometimes be misleading. That “fat-free” item might be loaded with extra sugar, for example.

The important thing to remember is that the healthiest foods haven’t been over-processed, so they retain more of their nutrients. They don’t have too much added sugar, salt or fat. They deliver high amounts of vitamins, minerals and fiber. You’ll even find many foods packed with an extra nutritional punch and loaded with disease-fighting antioxidants. And the good news is that these great foods are easy to find. It’s just a matter of changing a few shopping habits and making different choices.

Introducing NuVal™
You’ll find all of the tools you need to create a healthy meal plan right in the aisles of your local Big Y.®

As always, our goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to make good choices for your family as you shop our stores. With that in mind, we’re proud to introduce the NuVal™ Nutritional Scoring System.

The NuVal™ Nutritional Scoring System ranks each food on a scale from 1 to 100, with 100 being the most nutritious. The goal of NuVal™ is to ultimately provide a score for all of the more than 50,000 different foods sold in every grocery store - from fresh produce to private label items to everything in between.

It uses the same criteria to rank all foods and beverages, which means that you can more easily compare items within and across different categories. And since you’ll see each food’s NuVal™ score right next to its price, you’ll be able to see exactly how much value you’re getting from the foods you buy. The NuVal™ algorithm was developed independent from food and beverage producers or manufacturers. Devised by an expert panel of medical and nutrition experts, NuVal™ was created to help simplify nutrition-minded shopping.
Throughout this magazine, we’ll take a close look at the NuVal™ System, explain the scores and give you tips on how to use NuVal™ as you shop. We’re excited about NuVal™ and the opportunities it will give our customers to make healthy, informed decisions about the foods they purchase.

Having good intentions is a great place to start, but it’s also important to become an educated consumer.