It stands for Overall Nutritional Quality Index and it'll do for you what the Health Check doesn't - steer you to more nutritious choices and do so with rigorous scientific underpinnings.
Developed by 12 of the world's leading nutritional experts in a manner explicitly designed to shield them from the influence of industry, ONQI is the dead-simple product of the complex algorithm developed by these experts which rates a food on a scale of 1 to 100 - the higher the number, the healthier the food.
The expert panel included Dr. David Katz co-founder and director of the CDC funded, Yale University - Griffin Hospital Prevention Research Center, Dr. Walter Willett chairman of nutrition at Harvard sine 1991 and regularly featured researcher on this blog, Dr. Rebecca Reeves past president of the American Dietetic Association, Dr. David Jenkins from my alma mater the University of Toronto and the inventor of the glycemic index and 8 others who I haven't been able to identify from the various news articles yet.
Dr. Willett had this to say at the press conference,
"Given the rising toll of nutrition-related health conditions in the U.S., in particular obesity, it is important to provide consumers with a simple standard regarding food choices that is as reliable as it is easy to understand. The ONQI is a labeling system that can help everyone make healthier choices in every food category quickly and easily"Dr. Katz explained how ONQI works,
"People can improve their diets, and their health, both by changing the categories of foods they eat most - for example, by eating more fruits and vegetables - and by making better choices within a given category, including snack items and desserts. The ONQI is designed to do both. You can, in fact, compare apples to oranges (oranges win), or apples to marshmallows. But of more practical value you can compare one box of kid's breakfast cereal to another, cut right past all the marketing hype, and get to the truth at a glance."If you want to see Dr. Katz talk about it, click here.
Awesome!
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So if I am a consumer and I see a ONQI score of 68, am I supposed to buy that product or not? What about a 39? A 76? Along with nutrient content claims, SmartSpot, Blue Menu, Health Check, Goodness Corner, Sensible Solutions, Health Claims, Traffic Lights, ONQI is supposed to make things LESS confusing? And what if I am simply trying to reduce the saturated fat in my diet? How is the 78 going to help with that?
ReplyDeleteWHY don't we just educate consumers on how to read and interpret the Nutrition Facts table as an objective measure of determining the nutrition values of foods.
One scale score! Simple, direct and great for comparison. I can see this as a complement to the nutritional information on the packaging. You see low score, so you keep looking for the reason. Hopefully the food industry will get on board.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. One chart of food rankings can be found at this site:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.griffinhealth.org/Research/ONQIpages/Rankings.aspx
According to this list, Diet Coke has a ONQI rating of 1.0 while regular Coke has a rating of 3.58. Though neither are particularly good (understatement), this means regular Coke is better than Diet Coke!?
Bob
Hey Bob,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link!
Not sure how to interpret as clearly those scores aren't in their final state as the ONQI that will be on packages will be on a scale of 1-100. Given that there are items with scores of 12,000, I wonder whether instead of dealing of ONQIs of 1 for diet pop and 3.58 for regular we may be dealing with 0.001 and 0.0036 though I agree, it does seem odd that regular pop is scoring higher.
We'll have to wait to see what the final version looks like.
Regards,
Yoni
One should beware of Katz' ONQI for two reasons: its very simplicity, and the fact that it is proprietary.
ReplyDeleteMore here:
http://blog.identitycommerce.com/index.php/2007/12/20/beware-food-rating-systems/
In response to Nick's comments, I will refer him to a very interesting exchange I found on Dr. Marion Nestle's blog at http://whattoeatbook.com/2008/01/02/
ReplyDeletemore-on-nutrition-scoring-david-katz-responds/
where Dr. David Katz gave a very thorough and thoughtful response to just that kind of criticism. I hope you find it helpful. I wish you good health for this new year!
Does anyone know if there's a full listing available yet? I've seen a short list on the ONQI site, and another one in National Geographic, but no full list. The ONQI site says there's a handbook coming in 2009; do we need to wait for this to get the ratings?
ReplyDelete