Hannaford: Some Food’s Just Super

By DONNA GOODISON

Hannaford Bros. Co. is giving star power to its healthier grocery products.

The supermarket chain will roll out a new system that rates food products’ nutritional content based on a star system.

The “3 Stars to Better Health” program aims to help consumers make healthier choices without having to read and understand product nutritional labels.

The stars will be placed on the shelf price stickers below products, according to a Hannaford customer panel, which tested the program with consumers.

Foods with little or no nutritional value will receive no stars, while one star will go to better-than-average foods with good nutritional value. Products with even better nutritional value that are low in fat, salt and calories will get two stars. The top rating will be reserved for what Hannaford calls “super foods” – those “naturally loaded with the best nutrients.”

“Our stars are based on nutritional guidelines developed by nutrition experts and endorsed by national health advocates,” the company said in the e-mail survey.

Unclear at this point: How manufacturers will react to poor nutritional ratings of their products. Food makers typically pay slotting fees to get prime shelf space in supermarkets.

That relationship appears to be a potential conflict with a rating system based on quality, as measured by nutritional value.

Scarborough, Maine-based Hannaford, which has 145 supermarkets, didn’t return calls from the Herald.

The Hannaford program comes with a responsibility to ensure products are properly evaluated, said Bob Vosburgh, an editor at Supermarket News magazine.

“If consumers start changing their buying habits because of that, even a little bit, that’s a pretty significant shift in the way that a retailer can relate to their shoppers instead of throwing coupons, promotions and buy-one-get-one-free offers at them,” he said.

But the Food Products Association says consumers are best-served by reading products’ nutritional panels.

“We question anything that takes consumers’ attention away from that information, because that really tells consumers what’s in a product,” said Tim Willard, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.- based trade group.