The Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, along with its team at Tufts, has devised a new tool to assist cafeterias, restaurants, food companies, and consumers choose healthy food alternatives and officials to frame a healthy public nutrition policy.
Food compass is a nutrition profiling system that incorporates advanced science on how diverse characteristics of food impact human health. However, the crucial features of the novel system, as reported on October 14 in Nature Food, include:
- Simultaneous insights on both the harmful and helpful factors in the food.
- It involves advanced science on additives, phytochemicals, processing characteristics, food ingredients, and nutrition.
- It objectively rates the mixed dishes, beverages, and foods with a consistent score.
The new food compass system was built and later tested with the help of a detailed National database of 8032 food and beverages used by Americans. It effectively scored the 54 different characteristics in nine different domains offering a unique dimension of health-related aspects of mixed meals, drinks, and foods, therefore making Food Compass the most comprehensive nutrient profiling system globally. The domains and characteristics were chosen according to the nutritional attributes with links to major chronic disorders like cardiovascular problems, diabetes, obesity, cancer, and potential risk of undernutrition, particularly for the elderly, children, and mothers.
Food Compass was innovated to extract the additional attributes and scoring based on the future evidence in the aspect of mental performance, physical health, bone health, brain health, immune function, and gastrointestinal health, along with the sustainability provisions.
The potential utility of food compass involves:
- Helping the food sector on how to make healthy foods along with reformulating the raw materials and ingredients in processed foods and snacks.
- Help hospital cafeterias, business, and school areas to present healthy food options.
- Guide the individual and institutional investors on social and environmental investment decisions.
- Facilitate food purchasing incentives for workers through nutrition assistant, healthcare, and worksite wellness programs.
- Supplying designs for national and local policies like warning labels, taxation, package labeling, and restrictions on marketing to children.
Food compass is the first primary nutrient profiling system used to rate the diverse food group, particularly in mixed dishes. However, the ratings help in better and improved comparison among the combination food and beverages that can be consumed together. The food compass has devised an intelligent approach to encourage healthy food choices, thereby guiding consumers and promoting healthy behavior and better food industry practices. Also, the consistent scoring on different foodstuffs helps consumers to rate the entire shopping basket and their daily diet pattern, thereby helping to eliminate the harmful products, which in turn will enhance human health.