If you’re like me, it’s becoming harder and harder to live in the real world and also eat what is nutritious. With so many new products and reformulations of old products, it’s bewildering to visit the supermarket and find what your family wants and what you know they should have. If I feel this way it must be even harder for those without the interest and education in nutrition that I have.
Well, Walmart is coming to the rescue! Rather than going the way of other front of package systems which give nutrient content and calories to compare with other products, Walmart’s system has gone the threshold route. With the Great for You icon, Walmart has chosen to help shoppers speed through the supermarket by identifying which foods meet their standard for healthy. Unlike many other similar systems which promote a corporate product, Walmart’s beneficiaries are their shoppers.
After the Great for You release, several media outlets suggested that Walmart officials were undecided about whether eggs would receive the Great for You icon. From what I read, eggs did receive the icon because their benefits of high quality protein and affordability far outweigh the questionably unfavorable association of dietary cholesterol with health. This shows me that the officials at Walmart understand that although there may be some passionate people who believe food must be expensive and unpleasant to be healthy, most people need affordable foods that are easy to prepare and liked by all family members. In all cultures and for generations, eggs been considered a delicious source of affordable nutrients and now Walmart’s Great for You icon makes that simple to recognize.
We don’t see that kind of care and compassion on the part of a major corporation very often so I think Walmart‘s initiative to differentiate its products should definitely be prasied. People need to know what kind of food they buy and what ingredients it is composed of. For my country I can say that organic food in Canada has recently been on the rise and I do believe that Walmart’s initiative in this particular area can really contribute to increase our awareness of what is healthy and what should be avoided.