Dear Editor:

I agree with most points in your editorial, Our view on healthy eating: Food labels provide more confusion than clarity, from Nov. 3.  The now-defunct Smart Choices rating system will not be guiding consumers in making food purchasing decisions.  However, we still need a reliable nutrition rating system to take its place.  Increasingly, society calls on us to take responsibility for our own health.  This will only happen when we have quality information that helps us make purchasing decisions at the grocery store.  How can we do so when we must rely on packaging information that contains either potentially misleading health claims or difficult-to-understand standard nutritional data?

Only a system that 1) is backed by science, 2) is free of industry bias, 3) rates all foods and 4) allows comparisons of many products on a wide-ranging scale will enable consumers to make healthy purchasing decisions.

You aptly point to possible alternatives such as one developed by the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center and another by Hannaford supermarkets.  Let’s evaluate these systems and find a nutritional rating system that empowers us all to choose wisely what we feed our families.

Mark B. Johnson, MD MPH FACPM
President
American College of Preventive Medicine Washington, DC  

Mark Johnson is President of the American College of Preventive Medicine, the national professional society for physicians committed to disease prevention and health promotion.