Published: November 2018

ID #: 1107

Publisher: Healthy Eating Research

Authors: Fox TF, Corbett A, Better-for-You Foods Scientific Advisory Committee

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Retailers and other organizations currently use a variety of nutrition standards and recommendations to guide consumers towards healthier, “Better for You”, options. This variety can be confusing to consumers. Healthy Eating Research convened a scientific advisory committee to review existing “Better-For-You” nutrition standards, and analyze their strengths and weaknesses. The scientific advisory committee developed a list of questions and criteria that can be used to evaluate “Better for You” nutrition standards. The resulting tool, Assessing High Quality Nutrition Standards (AHQNS), considers how closely standards align with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. This report details the process used to review and evaluate “Better for You” nutrition standards, and the results from a preliminary implementation of this tool to review existing standards. It highlights the three standards that scored highest with this initial use, and explains why these standards scored the highest.

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