Who gets to decide what the definition of "healthy" is?

A New England grocery chain has introduced a "3-star" system for rating the nutritional content of products on its shelves. This effort earns them 4 show-me-the-evidence soup cans (yes, we are rating the ratings).

Many of you already know that food labeling is near and dear to my heart: Early on, I wrote a couple of primers on the topic. Although the system isn't perfect, Nutrition Facts labeling has raised awareness and created a uniform, straightforward way of communicating the contents of food products. The Hannaford Brothers Guiding Stars program summarizes what's listed on Nutrition Facts labels, using a patent-pending algorithm to assign one overall score to each product. This is exactly what suppliers should be doing (in the food industry and elsewhere): Giving people evidence they can use, and showing how to use it. Going beyond regulatory mandates to provide valuable, easily accessible information.

Sodium is a good example. If a can of something truly beneficial like cannellini beans contains high amounts of sodium, is it still healthy? We do need a way to distinguish between a can of Eden Organic cannellinis (at 2% of recommended daily sodium consumption) and a Kuner's weighing in at a whopping 16%. But it shouldn't always be up to the FDA to determine how that happens. And it needs to be even simpler than the Nutrition Facts listings, which studies show don't always get the right message through to consumers. As explained in a November 6 New York Times article, the Guiding Star system is more stringent than the FDA rules, which sometimes allow claims such as "good source of fiber" even on products high in not-so-good ingredients.

Why 4 soup cans? The Guiding Star system earns 4 soup cans because it goes beyond simple listing of evidence about ingredients, putting things in perspective by creating an overall score based on a food's contents. It uses a simple, visual approach (0-to-3 stars). And they get points for honesty: Apparently, most of their own store-branded products have been awarded no stars.