Healthier Food Choices At The Grocery Store

News has come to me that largest grocery store chain in the U.S., Wal mart, announced that it will reformulate thousands of products to make them "healthier" and push its suppliers to do the same. This means that the healthy eating craze has now gone mainstream. As Wal mart goes, so goes the rest of common culture. This announcement means that other grocery stores will have to follow suit in order to compete for a customer base, since it appears enough customers have been indoctrinated into the "healthier food" consciousness now to justify appealing to them in the stores.

But what is a "healthy item"? That is a dilemma for both the food maker and the consumer to decipher. At present, there are many different labels on food products that claim that just about everything from donuts to tofu is a healthy choice. Few understandable criteria exist that identify some foods as healthy or not, largely because manufacturers have so confused us with silly health claims, we just don't know.

Wal mart's general plan is to reduce sodium and added sugars in some items (that is a nice plan if the taste aspect isn't eliminated in the process), build stores in poor areas that don't already have grocery stores (the poor here are the most obese and least healthy of all groups, given their lack of education about what is a "healthy lifestyle"), reduce prices on produce to urge consumers to buy more of that and to develop a logo for healthier items.

Since Wal mart is the monster of retail companies and can intimidate its suppliers to do what it wants, it will be interesting to see if the consumer agrees with Wal mart that he or she need buy the "healthier food". If the items Wal mart pushes are not tasty I doubt this campaign will succeed. Consumers are first loyal to taste, not the nutritional benefits food gives.

But is a carrot that sits on a grocery shelf for a week better nutritionally than a vitamin and mineral fortified surgery cereal? Is fresh fish, most of which are full of mercury and other chemicals absorbed from the ocean, better than a piece of fatty bologna? Is a multi grain, yet chemically treated, "health snack bar" better than a serving of strawberry flavored yogurt? The list of questions about what is desirable and not, and what effects eating both the so called healthy and so called unhealthy foods have are largely a blur today.

Until the grocery store shopper has a clear vision of what is best to eat, taste will continue to be the determinant for most shoppers. Like most fads in our non thinking, trendy and vacuous culture, this movement to a change in diet may be short lived. It could be that Wal mart will sell its "healthier" foods a few months, then discover those items won't sell well. The profit motive may force Wal mart to go right back to the snack cake and soft drink diets that the majority of shoppers seem to prefer.