Dr. Katz: NuVal makes debut in empowering app

Perhaps the single, proudest achievement of my 25-orso-year career in public health to date was leading the development of the Overall Nutritional Quality Index algorithm, or ONQI®. That effort, completed in 2006, involved an illustrious team of colleagues from throughout North America, who worked closely with my staff and me for two years. When we were done, we had a sophisticated formula that incorporated more than 30 nutrient properties of a food, weighted each one for its health effects and generated a number on a continuous scale, the higher that number, the more “nutritious” that food.

My original intent had been to give the system to the FDA. When that didn’t work out, because the system went beyond what the agency was willing to do at the time (and perhaps even now), a private company called NuVal, LLC was formed to license the program into supermarkets. Known as NuVal, and rating food on a scale from 1 (least nutritious) to 100 (most nutritious), the ONQI has been providing nutrition guidance to shoppers in nearly 2,000 supermarkets throughout the U.S., including Big Y and Price Chopper here in Connecticut, for years. Now, at last, the system is being made accessible to everyone* as an interactive website and an app, called NuVal Empower. I am delighted.

Before saying more about the system, two important provisos. The first is that the new system is by subscription, not free. The other is that I do not have any stake in it. As the principal inventor of the ONQI, I once had a stake in the business operations, but no longer do, and have not for quite some time. I simply have a stake in the public health mission NuVal was developed to serve: facilitating better diets, and better health, one well-informed choice at a time. Ultimately, that serves my principal ambition of helping to add years to lives, and life to years.

Why now, after nearly a decade? First, the business decided to place particular emphasis on use in supermarkets, and for some time, wanted to favor that use with some degree of exclusivity. More importantly, from my perspective, is that the past decade has been used to fortify both the resources NuVal provides and the science proving its value.

Regarding those resources, NuVal houses what is, to the best of my knowledge, the largest, most detailed, most current, and most carefully reviewed nutrient database in the world. That’s because well over 100,000 foods have been scored, each one matched to highly specific identifiers, and those bar codes we all know and love. For every item in that vast database, there are over 30 nutrient entries. It’s a veritable treasure trove of nutrient information, and it took a lot of years and a lot investment to get it there.

Regarding the science, the case after 10 years is rather clear: NuVal is the most robustly validated nutrient profiling system on the planet. My own lab ran and published initial validation studies. Much more important, though, is the work of scientists completely independent of NuVal. A study out of the Harvard School of Public Health of over 100,000 people showed that NuVal scores correlated with both chronic disease rates and allcause mortality: The higher the average scores of foods consumed, the lower the rate of dying prematurely from any cause. To the best of my knowledge, NuVal was the first nutrient guidance system ever to clear that bar.

Numerous other studies since have shown that NuVal works just as intended where the rubber hits the road. It is easier to use and understand than any system to which it has been compared, and much more useful than the standard nutrition facts panel. It leads reliably, and consistently, to better food choices by individuals, and it shifts sales overall to more nutritious foods. My group has also published a paper showing that the more nutritious foods to which NuVal leads do not, on average, cost more. The anecdotes are impressive, too. We have heard from people who attribute losing more than 100 pounds to NuVal guidance, and trading up their groceries!

But cost remains a concern for me, and that’s the reason for the asterisk next to “everyone.” The families that need guidance to better nutrition most urgently are often those that can least afford food, let alone a subscription-based app to guide them to it. The answer, then, and what I hope will be the next phase for NuVal and public health, is for employers, insurers and the government to subscribe to NuVal Empower on behalf of their clients, to whom they pass it on without cost. Why should they? Because those clients will cost them a lot less if they eat better, and develop significantly less chronic disease. Everybody can win.

A better diet is one of the most powerful steps any of us can take toward better health. I am delighted to help announce there is an empowering new way to help you get there from here.