NuVal System Helps Supermarket Shoppers Make Better Nutritional Choices

Aug. 2, 2010 — -- Here's a novel idea: Instead of giving people nutritional advice at the doctor's office, in a book or on TV, give it to them right when they need it -- at the grocery store.

Some of the national's biggest grocery chains are trying to give people healthy guidance right as they shop.

At one Safeway store in Washington, D.C., you can sign up to have the store compare your purchase history with national nutritional recommendations. Hy-Vee and Wegmans stores are hiring dietitians to take people on nutritional tours of their local stores.

Hannaford supermarkets now rate the healthfulness of foods from 1 to 3 stars. And ShopRite and Giant Eagle have experimented with giving people register coupons for healthier versions of the products they just purchased.

And then there is the NuVal System, available in several different chains, that boils nutrition down to a 3-digit number.

It's easy for nutrition information to go right over shoppers' heads. After all, there are 50,000 mind-numbing choices in a typical supermarket, so now some stores are trying to bring nutrition down to earth.

Click HERE to learn more about how NuVal works.

"They weren't looking for us to tell them what to eat," Ellie Wilson of Price Chopper told "Good Morning America." "They were looking for information to help them make their decisions and that's what we felt our role was here."

One Price Chopper store in Warwick, N.Y., puts nutrition scores right on its shelf tags. The scores range from 1 to 100, and higher is better.

"It makes it so much easier than having to read through the ingredients' labels and the nutritional labels and I think that's great," shopper Dawn Thomas told "GMA."

"You are what you eat and in today's world, everything is hustle and bustle and the rush and junk food, so that's why this is very important," said Maria Gioffre, another shopper.