If you're not familiar with NuVal, it is a nutritional scoring system that supposedly lets consumers make healthier choices between various products. Foods are ranked on a scale from 1-100 with 100 being the healthiest food. NuVal scores are starting to show up on the product tags on the shelves at supermarkets. I noticed something odd yesterday.
I'm wanting to start eating oatmeal every morning for breakfast, and was considering adding some dried fruit to the oatmeal to help sweeten it up. I was thinking either dried cranberries or raisins. I know dried fruits aren't the healthiest foods out there because of the concentrated amounts of sugar in them, so I wanted to see which would be the better choice.
The dried cranberries I looked at were 130 calories per serving, contained 26g of sugar, and had 3g of fiber. The raisins also had 130 calories per serving, but had more sugar at 29g and less fiber at 2g. It would seem the cranberries just edge out the raisins. But then I noticed that both products had NuVal scores on their tags. The raisins had a score of 87, while the cranberries had a measly 4.
If the two products contained the same amount of calories, but the cranberries had less sugar and more fiber, why are they so astronomically less healthy than the raisins?
I'm wanting to start eating oatmeal every morning for breakfast, and was considering adding some dried fruit to the oatmeal to help sweeten it up. I was thinking either dried cranberries or raisins. I know dried fruits aren't the healthiest foods out there because of the concentrated amounts of sugar in them, so I wanted to see which would be the better choice.
The dried cranberries I looked at were 130 calories per serving, contained 26g of sugar, and had 3g of fiber. The raisins also had 130 calories per serving, but had more sugar at 29g and less fiber at 2g. It would seem the cranberries just edge out the raisins. But then I noticed that both products had NuVal scores on their tags. The raisins had a score of 87, while the cranberries had a measly 4.
If the two products contained the same amount of calories, but the cranberries had less sugar and more fiber, why are they so astronomically less healthy than the raisins?