By Ashley Hassett
Amherst, NY – A local supermarket chain is trying to provide better nutritional assistant to consumers.
Tops Markets introduced an easy to use nutritional scoring system. The Nu-Val system will allow customers to shop for healthier foods quicker and with out having to deal with nutrition labels.
Tops will be displaying signs in front of their foods indicating scores from 1 to 100. The higher the score the more nutritional value the food has. Tops President and CEO Frank Curci said The NuVal system will make it easier for customers to shop healthy.
"It's a method to allow customers to help make healthy choices in the stores. We know that the choices are pretty dizzying today for consumers and they want help in leading healthy lifestyles and making good choices in the stores. This scoring system will allow them to make choices within the store," said Curci.
Buffalo State College Director of Health promotions Dr. Catherine Ansuini said NuVal will allow customers to not have to look at nutrition facts.
"NuVal affords us the opportunity to be our calculators so we don't have to do it. Our translator so we better understand the content of whatever it is we have to choose, based on whatever reason were choosing it and now the only thing that's left to us is making our personal selection based on personal need," said Ansuini.
UB pediatric-biomedical professor and member of the NuVal advisory board Dr. Len Epstein says consumers will now be able to see scores on current products they buy and change to health products.