When it comes to yogurt, nutrition isn’t always black and white. Although we tend to assume that yogurt is an inherently healthy food, that’s not necessarily the case. Many are loaded with added sugars, preservatives, and all kinds of other non-yogurty additives.
Luckily more and more people are looking at a product’s nutrition facts panel and ingredient label before adding it to their carts at the grocery store. And more and more nutrition scoring systems are popping up to help consumers make smarter choices.
Once such program is Nu-Val, a nutritional scoring system developed by a team of nutrition and medical experts. It was created to separate the losers from the winners and help “consumers see – at a glance – the nutritional value of the food they buy.”
The NuVal system uses the Institute of Medicine’s Dietary Reference Intakes and the Dietary Guidelines For Americans to quantify the presence of more than 30 nutrients – including vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants; sugar, salt, trans fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol. The system also incorporates measures for the quality of protein, fat, and carbohydrates, as well as calories and omega-3 fats. The NuVal™ System also takes into account how these nutrients influence health based on broadly accepted, published scientific literature.ased on a product’s nutritional profile.
The NuVal scores for yogurt range anywhere from 22 to 99 (talk about good, bad, and just plain ugly!), with 100 being the highest possible score. Out of this range, our 0% Plain Chobani Greek Yogurt scored a 94. That’s near perfection! Woo-Hoo.
Click here for some awesome recipes featuring our 0% Plain Chobani.