Walmart joins stores labeling healthier food selections

Walmart is trying to make it easier for customers to make healthier choices when shopping for food.

The nation’s largest grocer yesterday announced a new “Great for You” icon will start appearing this spring on fresh and packaged fruits and vegetables and select Walmart Great Value and Marketside store brand items that meet certain nutritional criteria.

“(Our customers) want to feed their families healthy food, but they’re confused by what they see on the labels and the conflicting advice they often see and hear in the news,” said spokesman Leslie Dach, executive vice president of corporate affairs. “They don’t have time to study and research the options.”

In developing “Great for You” standards, Walmart said it took cues from the Food and Drug Administration, White House, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Institute of Medicine.

“Clearly this is not the panacea, but it’s one small step that can help improve the diets of Americans,” said Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at Harvard School of Public Health. “In general this can be useful to help consumers make better choices, and it can also potentially be a way to encourage manufacturers to improve their products.”

Walmart follows other grocers that have adopted product labeling to identify healthier foods, including Stop & Shop, which introduced its “Healthy Ideas” symbols in 2009, and Hannaford Supermarkets, which launched its Guiding Stars program in 2006.

“It’s better than most, but it’s not saying a lot,” said Marion Nestle, professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University. “The criteria are stricter. Only 20 percent (to 25 percent) of Walmart’s Great Value products qualify.”

But Nestle says Institute of Medicine research shows consumers benefit most from talking about the negatives of certain foods rather than the positives, and having so many different labeling systems is confusing to them. “The FDA is in the process of trying to develop a coordinated, coherent and consistent front-of-package labeling program, and it’s moving at its usual glacial speed,” she said. “In the meantime, all these companies are moving in and doing their own.”