It was, I’d say, with a fair bit of glee that I read one of yesterday’s headlining stories in the Health section of the New York Times: “The Package May Say Healthy, but This Grocer Begs to Differ.”  The piece covers Hannaford Brothers‘ (a Portland, Maine-based grocery store chain) decision to independently rate foods based on their nutritional value and post that information for customers in order to aid in the consumption decision process.  Specifically, the company has scored foods with 0-3 stars, recognizing highly nutritious foods with 3 stars, lesser foods with 1 or 2, and faulting foods with little (or negative) nutritional value by “omission” (0 stars).  Amazingly, according to the article, “most of Hannaford’s own store-branded products did not get stars.”  That goes a long way towards generating credibility.

Here’s a great example of capitalism at work.  While unmentioned in the article, grocers face brutal competition from WalMart Superstores, which provide near zero-margin food in order to increase customer traffic and drive purchases elsewhere in the store.  Hannaford is working to differentiate itself, and the result, we hope, allows the company to “do well and do good.”

I’ve said before that much of our country’s healthcare woes result from an information services problem.  Admittedly, there’s a plethora of information out there about how to be healthy, but much of it is contradictory or confusing and takes highly proactive individuals to implement.  The Hannaford system is a great start towards the user-friendly “ranger” solution that I think it’s going to take to drive “health adoption.”

Of course, the NYTimes article includes a number of folks saying that they’re not going to pay any attention to the rating system.  Long-standing consumption behaviors die hard.  Perhaps in the face of a three-star system they do.  But I bet when individuals are armed with clear, real-time data about a food’s impact on one’s body, behaviors will change.  In the meantime, kudos to companies like Hannaford that are doing hard work on the frontlines.