For regular people, making good food choices is a complex and confusing thing. With all of the noise about what to eat vs. what not to eat, buying organic vs. non-organic, local vs. non-local, it’s no wonder we have ended up in dire straights.
Let’s face it, people are confused.
Wouldn’t it be great if we had a simple system to help consumers make better food choices? Perhaps something like the Energy Star rating system we have for appliances – something like this:
The system could rate food based nutritional quality and environmental impact – using a simple scale of 1-10 (10 being the best choice).
Some factors for environmental impact could include:
- Distance from purchase location
- Environmental cost of production (carbon footprint)- includes things like pesticides, land use, overall process sustainability, byproducts
- Cost of delivery
Some factors that would effect nutritional quality:
- Quality of ingredients
- Number of ingredients
- How processed is the item
What do you think?
