Clark Howard's Tips

September 25, 2007

Restaurants often put healthy selections on the menu and then report that no one orders them. People claim they want healthy food, but what they say and what they order are two different things.

Think about the frozen yogurt craze. People took what should be a low-fat healthy meal and then piled on hot fudge, nuts and syrups to make it fattening!

But now there's a supermarket chain in New England that may be proving people really do buy healthy things.Restaurants often put healthy selections on the menu and then report that no one orders them. People claim they want healthy food, but what they say and what they order are two different things.

Think about the frozen yogurt craze. People took what should be a low-fat healthy meal and then piled on hot fudge, nuts and syrups to make it fattening!

The Hannaford Bros. chain has launched a new nutrition-labeling program that aims to help make healthy shopping easy. The New York Times reports that Hannaford has gone through some 20,000 food items in its stores and labeled each of them with zero to three stars. Foods with zero stars are processed, fatty and sugary. Foods with three stars are things like vegetables, lean meats, beans, whole grain items and more. Sales of items with multiple stars have skyrocketed while those with zero stars have plummeted.

Clark loves that people have access to easy-to-understand information for making better choices -- even if he still would prefer to eat foods from the zero stars group.

Consumer advice courtesy of