Food Grade & Food Score Topic
Dietitian
04/10/15
Food Scores & Food Grades - things to consider when viewing the Food Score or the Food Grade:
1. It is not a direct assignment of nutritional merit and perfectly healthy foods might have a low score. This can happen when some healthful foods have primarily one type of macronutrient (especially mostly fat) and their nutrient content shines outside of the 12 nutrients listed on the U.S. Nutrition Facts panel. Example: olive oil.
2. It is best used to compare like items for a more nutritious choice, keeping in mind that the comparison contains only those nutrients listed on the food label. For instance, you could use the Food Score or Food Grade to compare and select the better breakfast cereal. But the score or grade is not a valid tool to use to compare different types of items, such as olive oil vs. croissant.
3. There is no validity to using daily Food Score totals - that will be completely removed from reports with the next web program update.
4. The Food Score and Food Grade are limited in terms of simply comparing similar single food items - they don't take into consideration the entire meal, snack, or day's intake. And summing the score by meal has no research or validity behind it to use it that way.
5. The grade assignments to the scores are not a part of the original Food Score research. This was performed by MyNetDiary due to the request of members to make the Food Scores more meaningful. The risk with using Food Grades is that folks will take the grade as a literal grade for the nutritional merit - try to avoid that trap.
To read more about the original Food Score, read this post: http://www.mynetdiary.com/food-score.html
To read more about how they did this in their FAQs (which I have copied & pasted here):
What is the Food Score/Grade - displayed in the corner of Nutrition Facts?
Sometimes deciding by a food label whether you should eat the food or skip it could be non-trivial. For example, what is more important - 6g of saturated fat or 30% of Vitamin C in the food? Which one outweighs the other?
To help you interpret food labels, MyNetDiary provides Food Score - displayed in the top right corner of food labels in MyNetDiary. The food score is calculated based solely on the food's Nutrition Facts. The methodology was published in the June 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, in the article Modeling Expert Opinions on Food Healthfulness: A Nutrition Metric by Jolie M. Martin, MBA, PhD; John Beshears, AM; Katherine L. Milkman; Max H. Bazerman, PhD; Lisa A. Sutherland, PhD, and used by MyNetDiary with permission. The study distills expert knowledge of leading U.S. nutrition experts into a simple nutrition metric, to help all of us to make more healthful food choices.
For typical food amounts, the food score varies from about +5 for foods that nutrition expert are likely to consider more healthy, to zero for average foods, and to -5 for foods likely to be considered not very healthy. For example, green beans get 3.6, pasta gets 0.3, and single meat patty burger gets -2.7.
Please note that the food score does not include calories - only nutrients. You should always strive to meet both your calorie and nutrient goals for the whole day. The Analysis screen provides additional details and recommendations.
To make it even simpler, MyNetDiary can display it as "Food Grade" - using grades from A to D instead of numbers, making it easier to remember and interpret at a glance. Below is the table MyNetDiary uses to translate numbers to grades.
> 1.5 A
> 1 A-
> 0.5 B+
> 0 B
> -0.5 B-
> -1 C+
> -1.5 C
> -2. C-
> -2.5 D+
< -2.5 D
Finally, please note that although we make every effort to improve quality of the food database, not all foods have all nutrients provided by the food vendor, or entered into the food database. In these cases, the calculated food score may be off.
Sunshine&Berries
04/16/15
I love the food scores. It's fun! It's not bad for making comparisons, either.
Oil really isn't the best thing in the world, so it makes sense that it doesn't score super-high! But it's nice to compare one oil to another, etc. :)
Justjennie
04/23/15
I'm not a big fan of the food score or grade based on what you said about how some foods have a low score based solely on the fat content. Most of my days are low scoring (or negative for that matter) based solely on the use of olive oil, coconut oil, cheese etc.
Dietitian
04/23/15
replied to Justjennie
Hi Justjennie, I completely undestand your point of view. Any food scoring system will be limited to just being a tool to compare like items. Also, all food scoring systems are also limited by the criteria upon which the score is based. Any finally (and most importantly), food scores don't give us any info about how we combine foods to make healthful meals.
Mtczajka
02/11/16
This thread is old, but what the food grades does for me is it makes me gived some things a second look to see if it is worth eating/drinking. If it's a C or D, I check the ingredients.
Justjennie
02/12/16
replied to Mtczajka
I get that but things like cheese shouldn't have a negative/bad score.
Dietitian
02/12/16
replied to Justjennie
I know but as I wrote earlier, it is more to compare like items and is not great for use in truly assessing a food's worth. Also, the total diet is important too, not just individual foods.
Amberlilyct
10/27/16
I made an awesome smoothie for lunch today, and when I entered recipe and tracked it, the food score was 19.1 !!!!!! Has anyone seen anything that high before?
I made sure to include only super healthy, low fat, high protein, high fiber ingredients, so I'm assuming that's why the score is so high. Isn't there a ceiling on how high the score can go? Or should a high score be something to be concerned about (too much food, etc)?
Amykee1
10/27/16
Amberlilyct, I've also gotten some pretty high numbers with the food score. It give you a smile, doesn't it? I realize the limitations of the food score, and realize what things make it higher (for example fiber). I never get upset if I have a low scoring food, b/c it happens, based on nutrients that it uses. To me, the food score is just "cool" to check out.
Amykee1
10/27/16
replied to Amykee1
I also like to check out one Quest bar, compared with a different Quest bar. It's fun.
Food Grade & Food Score
