CROWDSOURCE: If you shop at these supermarkets, I need your help!

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Do you shop at any of the supermarkets pictured in the above map?

If so, I'd welcome your help to move forward a story I'm reporting.

At the moment here's where it's at.

On May 23 I reported an item which included information I turned up suggesting that the New England supermarket chain Big Y may have dropped a high-profile nutrition rating system called NuVal that was developed by these prominent names:

Chair: Dr. David Katz, Yale University School of Medicine
Dr. Keith Ayoob, Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Dr. Leonard Epstein, University of Buffalo; inventor, Traffic Light Diet
Dr. David Jenkins, University of Toronto; inventor, Glycemic Index
Dr. Francine Kaufman, USC; Former President, American Diabetes Association
Dr. Robert Kushner, Northwestern University
Dr. Ronald Prior, Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center, USDA HNRC
Dr. Rebecca Reeves, Past President, American Dietetic Association
Dr. Barbara Rolls, Pennsylvania State University
Dr. Sachiko St. Jeor, University of Nevada
Dr. John Seffrin, President & CEO, American Cancer Society
Dr. Walter Willett, Harvard University

After posting my item, I spent weeks spinning my wheels trying to find out if Big Y was still using the NuVal system.

Multiple e-mails and messages to Big Y, NuVal LLC (the Quincy, MA company that markets the system), Dr. David Katz, and other players went unanswered.

Four months later via the September 12 Yale Daily News (emphasis added), it turned out that my Spidey Sense got it right:

Big Y adopted NuVal, a service that assigns numerical scores to food products based on their nutritional value, six years ago as part of an effort to promote healthy eating habits. But last April the chain dropped NuVal because of concerns that its ratings algorithm was out of date.

I'm now trying to find out if other NuVal client supermarkets are still using the system.

Based on my previous wheel-spinning, I thought this crowdsourcing approach might be more productive.  

If you're game, next time you're shopping at any of the supermarkets on the map, look for NuVal rating tags like this:

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If possible, please take photos and e-mail them to me with details including the store location, the date you visited, and any other information you'd like to share.

If you're really motivated, you could ask a manager or another employee if they know anything.

Click here for my contact information. If you want me to keep anything confidential, please let me know.