At a press conference this week featuring none other than First Lady Michelle Obama, Walmart made pledges that should, in principle, put more nutritious food within easier reach, literally and figuratively.
Literally, because the nation's largest grocer promised to reduce sugar and sodium in its own product line, and eliminate added trans fats over the next five years. They also plan to develop a logo to signify foods that meet their internal standard for better nutrition.
These promises sound good, and along with my public health colleagues, I commend Walmart for making them, and in anticipation of Walmart keeping them. But I must append some precautionary caveats.
Perhaps ironically, even as Walmart was promising both to provide more nutritious foods, and tell us which ones they are, the national non-profit, Prevention Institute, issued a report indicating that entities selling us food are not reliable judges of nutritional quality. The report, based on an examination of various front-of-pack claims indicating "more nutritious" children's foods, found that nearly 85 percent of the products with specific shout-outs about their nutritional virtues were unhealthy by the evaluators' objective standards.
I can validate this worry with a personal view from altitude. NuVal scores for overall nutritional quality have been generated for over 90,000 food products thus far. These scores require a database of ingredient lists, nutrition facts and scanned images of packaging for every product. In fact, to our knowledge, this is by far the largest and most detailed nutrient database on the planet.
It provides a disquieting view of how marketing claims and nutritional reality part company. The NuVal database includes examples of sugar-reduced kids' cereals that are less nutritious than the original, because of added sodium, reduced fiber and other changes. The average score for regular peanut butter is a respectable 20; the average score for seemingly more nutritious fat-reduced peanut butter is a far-less-respectable 7, because of copious additions of sugar and salt in place of the removed fat.
In fact, the consistency with which front-of-pack nutrient claims and an objective measure of overall nutrition go in opposite directions is so compelling that we are currently pursuing a formal analysis.
Will Walmart offer us truly more nutritious products, or products tweaked to allow for claims of better nutrition belied by an objective measure of overall nutritional quality? Time will tell.
As for putting nutritious foods figuratively within easier reach, Walmart also pledged to reduce prices of healthful foods -- produce in particular. Here, too, the commitment sounds good. But here, too, some caveats attach.
First, with the possible exception of the produce aisle, more nutritious food does not necessarily cost more right now, despite the urban legend that it does. In a research paper currently in press, my colleagues and I report what happened when we sent a volunteer grocery shopping with nutrition standards (freely available to you, by the way) and instructions to buy equal numbers of foods from a variety of categories meeting, and failing the standards. We compared price, and found no difference.
Why the urban legend in the first place? Because health conscious shoppers are willing to pay a premium for more nutritious foods, so there is an incentive to make foods that call out their nutritional virtues on the package, whether or not they are in fact nutritious overall, and charge extra for them. That practice prevails. But by and large, such foods are not more nutritious -- just more expensive! Often, a less expensive, more humbly packaged alternative offers better nutrition as well.
Walmart may simply be engaging in good corporate citizenship (I know some of the good people in high places there, and this is by no means implausible); they may be propping up their argument for real estate in New York City; or they may be making some promises they will have a hard time keeping.
But come what may, we all know that the business of business is business, and no publicly traded company will go very far in a direction that makes share holders unhappy. What Walmart does must ultimately be good for their bottom line, whether or not it's good for yours.
Logically, there is only so much a company that sells food can benefit from lowering the price of food. If we want real action in the area of making more nutritious foods more affordable, we need it from those directly involved in paying the health care costs that relate in no small measure to the bad food choices that currently prevail. The development and course of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease are powerfully and directly associated with food choices. For cancer, osteoporosis, arthritis and a number of other conditions, the causal chains are a bit longer and more twisted, but diet is still quite clearly among the key links.
Thus, policies that meaningfully shift food selection and diet pattern in a healthful direction with financial incentives could also meaningfully reduce the population burden of these conditions, which in turn could slash health care costs. The SNAP program would be a great place to prove the principle (my lab is working on that!). A little money spent to discount objectively more nutritious foods could generate vastly larger savings related to chronic disease care costs. Large employers, private insurers and the federal government could all win big.
And so could we. But only when the promise of truly better food, truly within easier reach of all, is truly kept.
Dr. David L. Katz
www.davidkatzmd.com
www.turnthetidefoundation.org
Follow David Katz, M.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DrDavidKatz
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What we will not do for ourselves, we will happily do for our children. Teaching them to eat a healthy diet and understand the link between diet, exercise and longevity might not turn our health statistics around tomorrow but they will in a generation. That by itself will bring down the cost of health care in this country.
That such disparate forces such as Mike Huckabee and Wal Mart (well-maybe not such a wierd combination since Huckabee was also a governor of Arkansas) are behing Mrs. Obama's initiative shows how far into the public discussion the childrens' health initiative has progressed.
It might even prompt more local school boards to add a cooking element to their health-ed classes (what we used to dismissively call "cookie pushing") and bring PE back as a required class for all students every semester.
If a Clinton/Bush duo can try to save Haiti, maybe a Clinton/Huckabee duo might do the same for our kids.
I am not a fervent Walmart fan; preferring to shop at local grocery chains, warehouse stores and local farm stands. I consider myself fortunate that I reside in area where such grocery outlets are plentiful.
The problem with the American diet is at fault here, in my opinion. I am a basic "from-scratch" home cook. I have a wealth of recipes that I prepare throughout the year. (heavy on greens/produce and fruits that are "in season" during during the summer months and recipes incorporating U.S. grown produce such as root vegetables, apples, pears, citruses and dried legumes during the cooler/cold months).
I grew up during the 1950s/1960s and recall that no out-of-season fruits and vegetables were ever available. And...I and my siblings were well nourished.
I confess I am a carb addict and I am aware that the carbs in the form of desserts, breads and pasta products feed that addiction. I have had problems in the past with blood pressure control and I limit my carb-laden "goodies" to national brand companies such as Nabisco which now has "hint of salt" in their line of crackers. Cheese, another of my addictions is now marketed with "no-salt" versions now available.
Along with it went canning and preserving.
it surprised the heck out of me when I found most people don't buy pre-prepared foods just for those emergencies when they don't have time to cook. Now fewer and fewer have time to cook.
What are they doing will all that time they save?
My real question is, why does it seem as though Wally's produce is a genetically engineered time b0mb?
I keep my refrigerator cold, (36degrees) that said, Wally's produce will last no longer that 72hrs. I keep my home at 72 degrees and my wife has sensitive teeth, oranges not refrigerated same thing.
If I go anywhere else, which you can tell I do, I can get a week, (if needed) out of a head of lettuce at 1.16. I like to make salads and a lot of other veggies go into it as well as lettuce. So when after 3days the lettuce turns brown, (It's amazing, eat a salad 3rd night, wake up 4th day it's turning brown.) how are they able to accomplish this? Or is it just where it comes from and the time it takes to get there?
Also their "Great Value" items. Used to be, if you could eat them, it was a great value. (60 to 40% of name brand) Now there's pennies between them. They are also now starting to carry more expensive items 7.75 for a quart of spaghetti sauce to frame their other items. Just my .02, thanks.
Also, as I'm from a small town and HAD (as they've shut everyone down) to go there if I don't have time to drive 60mi R/T to buy something, and it doesn't work as intended, have to wait in line at C/S only to be told to go get another one and come back and wait in line again. On top of that I've noticed that they MUST send their C/S rep's to a training seminar, due to the way they treat their neighbor's. It's shocking. Go to Church w/ them on Sunday, make them jump through hoops on Monday.
I was doing yard work and needed something, (didn't look my best) and my wife bought something that needed returning. A septic take concentrate, (25$). C/S opened the bottle and stated, "you can't return this, it has no seal". 'I stated she was the 1st to open the bottle, and if there's no seal it's because it comes w/ no seal'. I found a floor manager showed him NONE of their drain cleaning/septic products had seals. He and I went back to her and she argued w/ him over following store policy.
I was going to finish w/ a thank you to him but thought better of it, as it probably would have landed him in some kind of trouble.