MINNEAPOLIS — Supervalu here said last week it plans to roll out a new nutritional labeling program — called Nutrition IQ — to all its banners nationally during the first half of the year.
The program is being introduced at the chain's 520 Albertsons stores in the West though March; this follows testing at 10 Albertsons in Southern California and 10 more in Utah and Wyoming since November, Haley Meyer, a company spokeswoman, told SN.
Supervalu plans to expand the program to 800 more of its retail units through the spring, she added, though the company is still deciding the order of the rollout. Those units include Acme, bigg's, Cub Foods, Farm Fresh, Hornbacher's, Jewel-Osco, Lucky, Shaw's, Star Markets, Shop 'n Save and Shoppers Food & Pharmacy.
The initial rollout will encompass approximately 4,200 Center Store items in the grocery, frozen and dairy categories, Meyer said. A second phase, which will be implemented after the national rollout, will include perishables categories, including bakery, deli, meat, produce and seafood, she added.
The 4,200 items represent approximately 14% of the stores' 30,000 Center Store stockkeeping units, she pointed out, although once the program has been implemented storewide, the total of all products labeled will be about 10% of the stores' 60,000 SKUs, Meyer said.
Nutrition IQ provides consumers with an at-a-glance approach to healthy eating based on a common set of criteria that were used to objectively evaluate all products, regardless of manufacturer, brand or price, she explained.
The program uses color-coded shelf tags that highlight 11 different nutrient claims in seven categories: orange tags for products that are excellent or good sources of fiber; blue tags for excellent or good sources of calcium; yellow tags for excellent or good sources of protein; dark-green tags for foods with low or healthier levels of sodium; purple tags for low-calorie foods; red tags for foods low in saturated fats; and dark-orange tags for whole grain products.
The tags are located just below the shelf label with the product price, unit price and bar code.
Based on early test results, sales of tagged items in the canned vegetables category increased about 11%, while sales of canned vegetables that did not meet the program's labeling criteria and were therefore not tagged declined, Meyer said; however, she added that since the testing took place during November and December, buying patterns may have been skewed somewhat by holiday-season purchases that involved less concern about nutritional content.
According to Meyer, Supervalu opted to go with its own program, rather than using other existing programs available within the trade, “because we believe ours is completely transparent, with no confusion about what the signs mean — which makes it very easy for customers to understand — and we believe it's objective, because we collaborated with a third party, which increases the program's credibility.”
The third party is the Joslin Clinic, which is part of an academic medical facility affiliated with Harvard Medical School in Boston.
