Validating a Nutrition Ranking System for Food Pantries Using the Healthy Eating Index-2015
This study aimed to validate the Healthy Eating Research (HER) nutrition guidelines ranked system against the Healthy Eating Index-2015 (HEI) and develop a formula to summarize the percentages of tier-ranked foods in an overall nutritional quality index that correlated with HEI. Using secondary data of foods selected by clients in 16 Minnesota food pantries (n = 503 “client carts”), results showed HEI scores were positively associated with percentages of green foods and negatively associated with percentages of red foods. The index demonstrated a moderate-to-strong correlation with HEI and can be used as a single measure to summarize the overall nutritional quality for sets of tier-ranked foods
Full citation: Gombi-Vaca, M.F., Xu, R., Schwartz, M., Battista Hesse, M., Martin, K., Caspi, C.E. (2022) Validating a Nutrition Ranking System for Food Pantries Using the Healthy Eating Index-2015. Nutrients, 14, 3899. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu14193899