Photos: Checking up on American Heart Association’s Heart-Check – My Grocery Store Safari

2018.02.04 Checking American Heart Association Heart-Check for Grocery Store Foods 2-27
It is true that the current Heart-Check Food Certification does not include the product cited in the original tweet. It is also true, though, that the Heart-Check program does certify sugar sweetened cereals 2018.02.04 Checking American Heart Association Heart-Check for Grocery Store Foods 2-27 (View on Flickr.com)

It’s not a secret – I like to take pictures and I like innovation safaris 🙂 .

With that in mind, the tweets below caught my eye.

I decided to do what I enjoy while perusing the aisles of the grocery store to visualize American Heart Association’s Heart-Check. I think there’s truth in both tweets.

My results are below. They include

  • products that used to have the Heart-Check seal but no longer do,
  • products that have the Heart-Check seal, some healthy, some not – there’s still sugar-sweetened cereals with the seal
  • products that don’t have the AHA seal but an AHA-like seal placed by food manufacturers, which stretches credibility in my mind and causes confusion (Chocolate Cheerios?)
  • Other products whose packaging was amusing in terms of subtle health claims/non-claims
  • Why is “Heart Wise” orange juice without the seal, but non “Heart non-Wise” orange juice with it?

Click to enlarge to see the food labels. Originals posted on Flickr, which you can access here.

The American Heart Association has made its criteria and food lists available on its web site.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Ted Eytan, MD
%d bloggers like this: