With an hour left, I'm feeling pretty good.

And if you post TLDR, you will meet my fists of fury.

Nutritionomics: Balancing Budget and Health as a College Senior
By Marni Newell
06/10/09
They’re relatively inconspicuous: the two hexagons connected in a diagonal on the shelf sticker labels. NuVal is written in the bottom hexagon and a number, 1-100, is in the top. It wouldn’t be noticeable to someone running in to Meijer just to buy bread or milk every week or so, nor would the pamphlet perched on a clear plastic holder on the shelves be a source of light reading for a college senior cramming for exams.
NuVal is short for Nutritional Value, the nutritional scoring system developed by Dr. David Katz of Yale University/Griffin Hospital. The system gives a score from 1-100 based on the overall nutrition of the food. “Included there,” the loop video of Dr. Katz on the NuVal website assures, “are all the things you would expect. Vitamins, of course, minerals and...macronutrients: the quality of the protein, the quality of the fat.”
The team creating the system was “independent of funding or influence by food or beverage retailers or manufacturers,” which explains why a box of Cap’n Crunch with Berries cereal has a rating of only eight, regardless of the green “Smart Choices Made Easy” label on the bottom corner of the box.
“There are so many different guidelines, people get confused,” said fitness trainer Carrie Brankiewicz while flipping through the NuVal pamphlet. “The buzz is nutrition and eating healthy.”
Eating healthy on a budget can be difficult, especially for a busy college lifestyle. “I know the struggle college students have—they want ready-made macaroni and cheeses where you put it in the microwave and it’s done,” said Megan Hass, nutrition instructor at Kalamazoo College. Hass stresses making small changes in diet toward a healthier lifestyle. “Maybe substitute water for pop for two times a day,” she said.
Kalamazoo College senior Jillian Regal was open to taking the NuVal or other healthy food systems into consideration. “I feel like I need my hand held with stuff like this,” she said. Normally eating mainly breads and pasta, Regal admits she’s “way too lazy to cook—even pasta.” This results in eating out a lot which makes her feel she’s wasting her money and disregarding her health.
Regal regularly shops at Meijer, but sometimes goes to the People’s Food Co-Op, a local grocery store containing mainly organic and local merchandise, but ultimately thinks it’s too expensive.
Hass echoes this sentiment as a Meijer regular, but tries to incorporate local and health foods just as she asks students to incorporate healthier eating habits—just small bits at a time.
Senior Vinny Ricciardi came up with a system of shopping at the People’s Food Co-Op, which costs him about $3-$4 per meal. His diet is “almost all local and almost all sustainably farmed.” Although he sometimes shops at Hardings for cheeses, Ricciardi likes to support local foods by shopping at the Co-Op or farmer’s markets. Ricciardi, who eats “tons of fruits, veggies, and nuts” in stir fries and vegetable dishes seems to be on his own nutritional system. “I try to stay away from processed food and refined sugar,” he said
These processed foods are what annoy Brankiewicz about diet systems. “The biggest problem I have with systems like Weight Watchers and Healthy Choice is it gets people to eat processed foods. It’s way better to teach people to eat whole foods rather than processed crap.”
Processed items sometimes score higher on the NuVal system than fresh foods, as seen in the canned chicken noodle soup shown on the back of the pamphlet with a score of 95 while boneless skinless chicken breast scores only 25. The system tips the scale of nutrients in the soup versus the chicken that packs only protein.
Pointing at the score of 95 on the soup, Hass wondered if it was a typo. “Those soups have a ton of sodium,” she said.
Senior Kendra Garchow agrees with this mentality, only buying processed foods like canned mushroom soup as bases for her meals. “I try to make everything from scratch,” Garchow, the self proclaimed “foodie” said. Primarily shopping at farmer’s markets and Hardings, Garchow admitted, “I shop sales, definitely.” Shopping once a week, Garchow tries to only spend around $20 per trip and because she tends to make her own pasta sauces and curries from scratch, she finds little need for the NuVal system. “Most times I try to cook healthy to begin with and it’s not as much as a problem because I buy whole foods.”
Brankiewicz commends healthy eating, but believes in a balance of nutrition and exercise. “People think it’s all food or all exercise, but it’s definitely a combination of both,” she said.
Senior Keely Houghton takes nutrition and exercise seriously, eating carbohydrates before a workout of “max out” weightlifting, and proteins afterward, which she does three-to-five times a week. Houghton, who shops mostly at Meijer, would take the NuVal system into consideration, but quickly added, “I look at nutrition already.” Spending around $50 per trip to Meijer, Houghton buys bread, eggs, vegetables, and frozen veggie burgers and burritoes as staples.
Senior Amel Omari eats a vegetarian diet of eggs, breads, vegetables, and veggie burgers. “I prefer to buy organic milk and eggs, but if I’m hard up on cash, I won’t get it,” Omari said. She tries to spend under $50 each trip to Meijer, which happens about every two weeks. Omari admits to buying processed bread, in contrast to Ricciardi who bakes his own, but said she needs the food to last. Omari said she would not take the NuVal system into much consideration since she buys what healthy food she can afford. Instead, her nutritional system is “based on what my mom fed me and what I learned in school,” she said.
To Hass, a healthy lifestyle isn’t about strictly following food guidelines. “I don’t want students to go from eating a 3,000 calorie diet to 1,200 calories a day because that’s what they read in a magazine,” she said. Small changes, Hass stressed. “You don’t have to eat perfectly, but you can still benefit from good food.”
Although diet systems and guidelines aren’t her preference for healthy eating, Brankiewicz doesn’t see much harm in the NuVal system. “If it makes people aware, it will never hurt.”