Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at 07:32 AM
Last week, while the kids were out of school for Christmas Vacation, I packed them up, picked up my mother, and we drove over the river and through the woods (literally) of Rhode Island and Connecticut to visit my Great Aunt Ruth. After a lovely visit with our favorite Aunt, we decided to stop by Price Chopper in Putnam, CT on the way home. I’m so glad we did.
My mother has heard a lot about NuVal and is a regular A Better Bag of Groceries reader, but this was her first experience seeing it live on the grocery store shelf.
My mom loved seeing all the scores. She kept saying, “We need this in a grocery store near us. We SO need this in a grocery store near us.”
This was my 6-year-old son’s second visit to a Price Chopper store. It was amazing to see him now that he had a little NuVal experience under his belt. He knew just how to look for the scores.
This Rice A Roni whole grain rice mix, which scores a 23, was a huge improvement over the kind we used to buy. You can see my daughter jumping up and down with excitement behind the box.
The rice mix we used to buy, Knorr Rice Pilaf , only scores a 3. We stopped buying that kind when we found out that little fun fact. You can read more about my Mommy Guilt over that one here.
My son now thinks of himself as a NuVal Pro. He loved showing off his NuVal prowess to his little sister.
He takes the Big Brother role very seriously. Here he’s showing his little sister how the Whole Grain Macaroni & Cheese gets a better score than SpongeBob Macaroni & Cheese. Remember that post? The Annie’s Macaroni & Cheese that we found did not score so well.
No, you do not need glasses. That is a 2.
My son loved showing Grandma how NuVal works.
My mom quickly got the hang of it. She had fun finding new, interesting products to try. Here she found a green olive tapenade with a good score.
That’s when I heard her say it again, “We SO need NuVal in a store near us!”
Every time I go to a Price Chopper, I find new things to try. There are so many products out there, but the scores shed new light on products that I would normally overlook. For example, on this trip, I found a very high-scoring canned tuna.
I had no idea there was lower sodium tuna. As a busy mom, shopping with 2 kids in tow, I rarely have time to explore new products. Normally, I would just buy the same old, same old – like this albacore tuna in water.
Now I know that I can get tuna that scores an 81 instead of the kind I used to buy (which scores a 55). I made a nice little tuna salad and served it on whole wheat toast. Yum!
It was bitter cold in Connecticut on the day of our trip and I was crazing something warm. Usually, I steer away from canned soups because of the sodium content. However, with all the scores on the shelf, I found a couple of higher-scoring soups that I took home to try.
It was so cool to show my kids the scores on a Trade-Up we’ve made in our household. We used to buy Capri Sun Roarin’ Waters for school snacks. They travel well in backpacks. However, they only get a score of 10!
Sorry my picture is so blurry! It’s tough taking pictures in grocery stores!
I remember I was in a Meijer store out in Michigan on a business trip when I found Minute Maid Fruit Falls with a score of 41. I wanted to pack it up in my suitcase and bring it home!
That is a 41, by the way. It looks like the folks at Price Chopper just had a little print alignment problem.
After quite some time in the grocery department, we finally ventured over to Produce.
“Wow!” my mom said, ogling all the scores of 99 and 100. “NuVal sure helps you to put nutrition into perspective.” Yup, that’s why I call them “Incredible Vegetables.”
So, we finally hit the checkout, with about 15 new products to try in my basket.
We climbed into the car, settled the kids in with water (NuVal score of 0) and chocolate Teddy Grahams (NuVal score of 25), and opened up our newly acquired Kashi Dark Mocha Almond TLC Bars (NuVal score of 27). After our busy and cold day, I still had 2 tasks ahead of me:
- Drive home
- Help my dad set up his new Ipod
Hmmmm. Teaching my mom and kids how to use NuVal to choose nutritious foods in the grocery store: Easy. Teaching my dad how to set up and use his new Ipod: Not so easy!
Winner of the Granola Challenge GiveAway
Congratulations to Commenter #14, Crystal! She correctly rank-ordered the three granola products.
Bear Naked Fit Triple Berry Crunch gets an amazing score of 91
Bear Naked Peak Protein comes in at a 45 (wow, big difference!)
Kashi Mountain Medley Granola gets the lowest score with a 31
Crystal will be receiving a great granola care package in the mail. Thanks for all the great guesses.
Question of the Day
If you could have NuVal scores in only one aisle of your grocery store, what would it be?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Macaroni and Cheese, Price Chopper
Tags: Macaroni and Cheese, Price Chopper, rice, tuna
Tuesday, December 1, 2009 at 07:05 AM
Readers of my old blog, Nutrition By the Numbers, may remember my Mac & Cheese post. I was in a Price Chopper store, where they have NuVal scores on the shelf, and I had a serious revelation. I discovered that the “Character” Macaroni & Cheese (e.g., SpongeBob, Spider-Man, Pokemon) that I was throwing into my shopping cart every week so as to quiet the whining of my children, was indeed, a low-scoring product. Lower than low. I mean, I didn’t expect it to be high, but seeing those 4′s and 5′s on the shelf tag was eye-opening.
Kraft SpongeBob SquarePants Macaroni and Cheese: 4
Kraft Spiderman Macaroni and Cheese: 5
Kraft ScoobyDoo Macaroni and Cheese: 5
Some people might think that Annie’s Macaroni & Cheese would score better than Kraft. Wrong! The regular Annie’s scores the same as Kraft.
Annie’s HomeGrown Cheddar Cheese Regular Macaroni and Cheese: 5
Annie’s HomeGrown White Cheddar Shell Macaroni and Cheese: 5
So, I stopped buying it. I flat out told my kids that it wasn’t a good choice. They are used to this kind of talk. Mommy works for a nutritional scoring system after all. So, we just stopped buying it and they stopped eating it.
Now, the Kraft Whole Grain Macaroni and Cheese scores better. It gets an 18. No, it’s not stellar, but it’s better. So, yes, the kids are still in the aisle clamoring for Macaroni and Cheese PLEEEAAASE. However, now they say, “Mom, can we get the Healthy Macaroni and Cheese PLEEEAAASE???” I’m so proud! 
We don’t eat it too often, but certainly at this crazy-busy time of the year, it will make the dinner menu.
I know there are probably readers out there wondering why I’m waxing on about a product that scores an 18. After all, my previous Trade-Up Tuesday Posts have featured such NuVal Rock Stars as Barilla Plus Pasta and Shredded Wheat. Well, I’m talking about it because even though this increase was only 14 points on the NuVal scale, it was a big step for my kids. Marketing to children is huge in the grocery store. Somehow, I managed to get them to give up their favorite characters (who are all at eye level, by the way) and switch to a plain old boring box of macaroni and cheese. That is worth blogging about.
Today’s GiveAway
One lucky reader will win my Whole Grain Macaroni & Cheese GiveAway, including:
- 4 boxes of Kraft Whole Grain Macaroni and Cheese
- An aluminum NuVal water bottle.
To enter, leave a comment, telling me a trade-up you’ve made since learning about NuVal. If you’re just learning about NuVal and haven’t made a trade-up yet, check out www.nuval.com to get some ideas. One winner will be chosen at random.
The contest closes at 11:59 pm Eastern Time Tuesday December 1st! Good Luck!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Macaroni and Cheese
Tags: Macaroni and Cheese, Trade-Up Tuesdays
Friday, October 9, 2009 at 11:44 AM
As I mentioned a couple of blog posts back, I got out to a Price Chopper store last week to help with an upcoming news story on NuVal. It was great to walk the store and see over 10,000 NuVal scores on their shelves. While I work for NuVal and get to see scores all the time, it really hits home when you can see them on the supermarket shelf and see how the products you like score.
And that is when I saw it. The product I have been tossing into my cart for over a year now in a quick attempt to avoid a mid-aisle meltdown: Scooby Doo Macaroni & Cheese. OK, I will confess. It is not just Scooby Doo who makes it into my cart. It’s SpongeBob Square Pants, Pokemon and Spider Man too. Back when the kids were smaller, before they had been sucked in by the power of Marketing to Children, we used to buy Annie’s Macaroni & Cheese. Once I started working for NuVal (but before we at NuVal had started scoring products in the Macaroni & Cheese category), I was pretty sure that Annie’s really wasn’t going to score much better. So I succumbed to the whine of “Mooooooommmmmm! Can we get Scooby Doo Macaroni and Cheese? Please!!!!!!!!” and bought it. It also does the trick on especially busy weeknights when I need there to be few fights at the dinner table.
So, (drum roll please), here you go, the scores my Mommy friends have been waiting for:
Kraft SpongeBob SquarePants Macaroni and Cheese: 4
Kraft Spiderman Macaroni and Cheese: 5
Kraft ScoobyDoo Macaroni and Cheese: 5
Kraft Easy Mac: 8
Now, Kraft does have 2 products that get a slightly better score.
Kraft White Cheddar Shell Macaroni and Cheese: 10
Kraft Whole Grain Elbow Macaroni and Cheese: 18
That’s great. But my kids want the ones with SpongeBob, Spiderman, and Scooby Doo!
And as for Annie’s, my instincts were right. The regular Annie’s Macaroni and Cheese does not score any better than Kraft. And the Annie’s Whole Wheat version scores only slightly better than Kraft.
Annie’s HomeGrown Cheddar Cheese Regular Macaroni and Cheese: 5
Annie’s HomeGrown White Cheddar Shell Macaroni and Cheese: 5
Annie’s HomeGrown Whole Wheat Shell Macaroni and Cheese: 21
Now, I know that some of my Super-Mommy friends will leave me comments with their recipes for homemade macaroni and cheese that has butternut squash in it and wheat germ too. That happened to me on CafeMom back when I wrote about Pepperidge Farm Goldfish vs. Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies. A mom wrote in and gave me her recipe for making her own “Fishies” from scratch. Yes, she shaped them into little fish. I am not making this up. Of course you could make your own Macaroni and Cheese and with the right ingredients, it would be healthier. Use a Whole Wheat Pasta, use a reduced fat cheese or a veggie slice alternative. Check out some NuVal Cheese scores and let your imagination run wild. But that is not the point! The point is that you are busy and your daughter has gymnastics and your son has cub scouts and you need to finish that thing for work and oh yeah, you need to get dinner on the table and get your kids to eat it quick so that everyone can back out the door for aforementioned activities.
You know what, you’re better off making a grilled cheese with a good 100% whole wheat bread!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Macaroni and Cheese
Tags: Macaroni and Cheese
