Great Value Generics From Walmart Will Grow To Be More Healthy
After months of discussions with Michelle Obama, executives at Walmart have made a promise to make their food more healthy. The generic house brand of food at Walmart could be reformulated. Less sugar, sodium, and fat could be included. You will find world-record high prices for several food goods, which makes the promise of lower prices a difficult one in many ways. Source for this article – Walmart pledges to make Great Value house brand healthier by Newsytype.com.
Headline from Walmart on making the Great Value brand ‘healthy-up’
Walmart promised to make a healthier Great Value brand name on Thursday within the announcement. There will be targets from the company. These will include getting trans fats, sodium and added sugars reduced. The company has also promised to cut back the prices of fresh fruits and vegetables in its stores. Walmart has also said that it will increase the amount of whole grains in many of the packaged store brands, as well. The store has also said it will push suppliers of name brand name products to meet these goals. This makes sense for vendors to be changing this as a lot of store-brand merchandise are re-branded by the store after it has been made by name-brand vendors.
Vendors making food more healthy
Other companies have been trying to get healthier standards pushed. Walmart is not the first. By 2015, there have been promises to lower sodium by 20 percent in merchandise by ConAgra foods who own Healthy Choice, Marie Calendar’s, Hunt’s, Hebrew National, Snack Pack and many other brands. There have not been needs made by the FDA. Nevertheless, companies seem to be regulating themselves for business’ sake. However, these self-regulating actions aren’t always proving effective. Sugar, high fructose corn syrup, no whole food ingredients and no green vegetables are in over 84 percent of items that the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative consider healthy.
Is price the problem?
There was another goal from Walmart. This included reducing fresh fruit and vegetable prices. Reducing food costs, however, might not be the answer to encouraging people to eat healthier. The world is showing a huge record high for the price of food. It can be a good idea to lower the profit margin. Many are upset about cheap food though. This is because it has made for more industrial food that has been processed. On average, about 15 percent of disposable income was spent on food. That was in 1970 though. The number went down from there. It was 10 percent by the time 2009 hit. Many question whether it’s possible to encourage “healthier” food without also raising the price.
Articles cited
USDA
ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/September08/Findings/PercentofIncome.htm
LA Times
latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-nutrition-labels-on-kids-foods-20110119,0,2275188.story
New York Times
nytimes.com/2011/01/20/business/20walmart.html?_r=2
