Roundy’s Debuting Nutrition Labeling Program

On Jan. 1, 2014, Roundy’s will introduce health key, a new program that uses shelf tags to label foods with healthy attributes, enabling shoppers with allergies and other health concerns to find what they need quickly and easily.

Labeled products must pass through filters specifically designed to leave out items with too much fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sugar, and sodium. For instance, if packaging says a product contains “whole grains” or any other nutrient, the product will receive a health key tag only if it contains less than 13 grams of fat, 3 grams of saturated fat, 60 milligrams of cholesterol or 480 milligrams of sodium in each serving.

Facilitating ‘Healthful Choices’

Customers encounter a sea of package claims every day when they shop,” noted Dana Schueller, senior marketing leader at Milwaukee-based Roundy’s. “health key evaluates all products against the same rules, allowing customers to be confident that they’re making consistent healthful choices throughout the store by following health key attributes.”

The colorful, easy-to-read health key tags have gone to thousands of individual products and will appear all 163 Roundy’s grocery stores, which operate under the Pick ’n Save, Rainbow, Copps, Metro Market and Mariano’s retail banners in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois.