"Overall Nutritional Quality Index System" Will Revolutionize the Food Industry

According to a PRWEB press release, Griffin Hospital, a not-for-profit subsidiary of Griffin Health Services Corporation located in Derby, Connecticut, has developed a system called the Overall Nutritional Quality Index. Griffin Hospital and specifically the Center for Disease Control-funded Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center states that their mission is to "measurably improve the standard of health and quality of life of the communities it serves and to develop innovative approaches to health promotion and disease prevention that will directly benefit the public's health". To that end, they are working with Topco Associates, a privately owned company in the food industry, to bring the Overall Nutritional Quality Index system, to the marketplace in 2008.

The system, sometimes referred to as ONQI, is a scoring system that will rank foods in order of their nutritional quality. The rank will be posted on grocery store shelves or on the packages of foods. The stated goal is to help consumers make healthier choices. According to the press release, a conference is scheduled for November 30, 2007 at Marriott at Metro Center in Washington D.C. Scientists, policy makers, food industry representatives, regulators and the media will attend and be provided with information about this invention and its capabilities.

According to PRWEB, ONQI has had the benefit of many experts in the field of nutrition and health. In fact, the press release states that twelve of these experts both from the United States and Canada worked over a two-year period to complete this project. Dr. David L. Katz, co-founder and director of the CDC funded, Yale University - Griffin Hospital Prevention Research Center is a nationally recognized authority in nutrition and chronic disease prevention. He is the primary director of the project which also included: "past presidents of the American Dietetic Association and the American Diabetes Association; the current president of the American Cancer Society; and top academic experts in topics from nutritional biochemistry, childhood diabetes and obesity, to epidemiology, among them the inventor of the glycemic index, and the originator of the traffic light diet guidance system".

Dr. Katz states that consumers will be able to compare one food to another, but that it will be even "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."

The nutritional score will be on a scale of 1-100 and will include both foods and recipes. Approximately 30 nutrients are included in the evaluation. The complex formula also takes into account such things as the effect of fiber in the diet and how other ingredients like sugar affect the body.

Dr. Rebecca Reeves who is a former President of the American Dietetic Association says, "This system certainly can help consumers make healthier choices within any food category. It's important that it is the product of scientists working independently of any commercial interest. It is a source people can really trust."

According to the press release, there are already plans in place so that consumers will be able to request the nutritional rank for every food being sold. Consumers will also be able to produce shopping lists, make substitutions in recipes, and structure meals according to not only their eating preferences but also their health issues and goals. ONQI should be available in thousands of grocery stores starting the middle of 2008. It will also be available on the Internet through several of the major health content providers on the web.

Source: PRWEB
Top Nutrition Scientists Develop Scoring System to Rank Order Foods on Overall Nutritional Quality
-- Conference for Scientists, Policy Makers, & Press on Nov. 30 in Wash. D.C.
http://www.prweb.com//releases/2007/11/prweb572345.htm