FIRST LOOK: Behind Kroger’s Collaboration With bitewell
As bitewell’s FoodHealth Score rolls out to Kroger stores, Progressive Grocer caught up with Samantha Citro Alexander, CEO and co-founder of Denver-based bitewell, to find out more about how the nutrition guidance system works and what the future holds in terms of future retail expansion and the evolution of the solution.
Progressive Grocer: When and why was bitewell developed?
Samantha Citro Alexander: bitewell was founded in 2020 to answer the question: “Is this healthy for me?”
That is the most common question people ask about food and nutrition. For the last approximately 100 years, we’ve been using calories as a proxy answer to that question. But 100 calories of Oreos and 100 calories of an apple don’t have the same impact on your body, so how do we give people a new number to look at instead?
bitewell created the FoodHealth Score to solve this problem. One simple number, on a scale from 1-100, that helps you understand how healthy a food is for you.
PG: How does bitewell differ from other nutrition guidance systems?
SCA: To truly improve the world’s health through food, we need a unified nutrition scoring system that people can trust. bitewell differs from other nutrition guidance systems in a few ways:
- bitewell is not calorie-based. Many nutrition guidance systems focus on the quantity of food we’re eating, but not the quality of food we’re eating.
- bitewell is health-outcomes focused. Newer nutrition guidance systems that focus on how “clean” a food is have emerged over the last several years. These systems take into account attributes like “organic” or “non-GMO,” but they leave out important nutrient density and ingredient quality measures.
- bitewell is personalized. My body needs different things than yours, and the FoodHealth Score takes that into account. The more information we have about you, the more personalized the score is to your needs.
Here’s a quick breakdown of how it works:
First, we score the food itself. Instead of just looking at “calories” – which are a great measure of energy but tell you nothing about how healthy something is or isn’t – the FoodHealth Score assesses nutrient density, ingredient quality and the amount/type of processing, to give us a full picture of the food.
Then, we score the food for you. My body likely has different nutrition needs than yours, so the score changes based on how well it fits your body’s unique needs and goals.
PG: Please describe how the Kroger-bitewell partnership came about, and what it entails.
SCA: bitewell spent its early days B2B, working with health care payers (insurers and employers) to use the FoodHealth Score to define and administer food-as-medicine programs.
Seeing the power of the FoodHealth Score in a smaller population of people, I made it my mission to bring the FoodHealth Score to all of us – at the exact moment we need help deciding what to eat – at the store.
bitewell is proud to announce a collaboration with Kroger, which brings the FoodHealth Score to millions of shoppers across their family of stores. This collaboration went live on Oct. 22. Now, when [customers are] shopping on Kroger.com or walking through the aisles with [the] Kroger app, [they] can see a FoodHealth Score on the products [they’re] about to buy.
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Kroger’s unique OptUp Nutrition Program also allows shoppers to see the FoodHealth Score of their purchases over time, even into the past, and provides insights about how to shop healthier.
PG: Are there any plans for other retailer activations for bitewell?
SCA: Our collaboration with Kroger is redefining nutrition transparency in the food industry. While Kroger is the first, we certainly don’t expect them to be the last. Our goal is for the FoodHealth Score to be the industry standard – allowing us to simultaneously raise the bar on nutrition transparency and measure nutrition security at national scale.
PG: How will bitewell evolve? Are there any changes/upgrades planned, and if so, what are they and when can we expect to see them?
SCA: Nutrition science is constantly improving, and so will we. Over the coming year, we will roll out a set of features, both in our retail partner environments and in our own FoodHealth Score app, that [will] help you to improve your health through food.
