Label Insight Issues Heart-Check Standard Certification Industry View
Label Insight has introduced the American Heart Association Heart-Check Standard Certification Industry View, which provides data enabling industry members, including brands, retailers, government agencies and researchers, to better understand market coverage for the Heart-Check Food Certification Program’s standard certification, assess the potential eligibility of products, and get insights on why products that don’t qualify aren’t meeting the criteria.
To qualify for the Heart-Check Food Certification Program, products must meet a range of nutrition requirements, among them guidelines for fat (total, saturated, and trans), cholesterol and sodium. Items must also contain a naturally occurring beneficial nutrient such as vitamin C, iron, calcium, protein or dietary fiber.
The Heart-Check Certification Industry View is currently available for standard certification, is the main certification type out of 12 total certification options available through the Heart-Check program. Further certification views will be added and available for use over the coming year.
“Our work with the American Heart Association is particularly gratifying to me and my brother Anton as we founded Label Insight out of a personal need, stemming from our father’s heart condition and his transition to a heart-healthy diet,” noted Dagan Xavier, co-founder and EVP, data as product at Chicago-based Label Insight. “Before we founded Label Insight, it was near impossible to determine what foods were appropriate for his condition – and we weren’t alone. … Now, with the Heart-Check Standard Certification Industry View, brands and retailers can make it easier than ever before to alert consumers to products that meet the American Heart Association Heart-Check Certification guidelines.”
“We need to know what’s in our food supply to improve upon it, so it’s necessary to have this type of data to improve the public’s cardiovascular health,” said Dr. Mark Huffman, a cardiologist, researcher, associate professor of preventive medicine and medicine-cardiology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, and chair of the American Heart Association’s 2020 Goal Metrics Committee. “We have a long way to go as a country to improve the diets of all Americans, and it’s almost unimaginable to think about how we could improve the food supply unless we have a way to track what’s in it. Data from Label Insight, through the lens of the American Heart Association Heart-Check Food Certification Program, are important to define the food environment on a scale and level of granularity that just hasn’t been possible until recently.”
Nearly 1,000 products are now certified by the Heart-Check Certification Program.
The Dallas-based American Heart Association established the Heart-Check mark in 1995 to give consumers an easy, reliable system for identifying heart-healthy foods.
Label Insight’s proprietary data science and machine-learning capabilities capture product labeling information and create more than 22,000 unique custom attributes per product.