I looked around a bit on her site to see what else she had to say, and found this on the "nutrivore score" page:
Quote:
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The Guiding Stars system rewards whole grains (despite their low nutrient-density compared to vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts and seeds), and penalizes for total fat, sodium, sugar and cholesterol. The net result is to overemphasize grains and deemphasize animal foods.
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They used this system at the grocery store where I worked, and while a food can end up with zero stars simply because there's "too much" fat, cholesterol, sodium or added sugar in the item, or get 3 stars simply because it falls into a low range for those categories, there's actually a bit more to it than that.
The guiding stars are based purely on RDA's on the item's nutrition label. They then add and subtract points based on the percentage of RDA: a high percentage of RDA in something that's "good" adds points, while a high RDA in something "bad" subtracts points. Similarly, a low RDA in something "bad" adds points, while a low RDA in something "good" subtracts points.
And of course we know what the good and bad are - "good" is fiber (it could be from sawdust and it would still be considered good), whole grains, low calories, or any of the 4 micronutrients listed on the nutrition label: Vitamin D, calcium, iron, and potassium (even if they're not part of the natural makeup of that sort of food, but instead simply added nutrients). "Bad" is higher overall calories, overall fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol (points can be subtracted for each of those), and added sugar - they want to see a low percentage of the RDA on those, or else they lose points.
What's considered to be "added sugars" is one of the problems because using concentrated fruit juices to sweeten a product is not considered to be an added sugar, even when it's the primary source of added sweetness. Sometimes a product's overall sugar/carb profile is higher than the same product in a sugar sweetened version, but the fruit juice concentrate loaded product can still result in 3 stars, whereas the sugar sweetened product loses points for the added sugar content.
The 4 micronutrients listed on the label are considered to be the ones most deficient in our diets - but they don't even consider the rest of the vitamins and minerals essential to health in allocating stars. If so many diets are deficient in so many vitamins and minerals, then Guiding Stars is hopelessly useless in determining what's a truly healthful food.
Last time I went on the Guiding Stars website and looked up a few foods, it took me a while to understand how they were coming up with the crazy star rating for each food. They all start as if they have zero stars. The get a point for each "good" RDA rating... but they deduct from those points for any "bad" RDA rating. In the end, foods which are extremely nutritious often end up with fewer stars than foods that are not only UPF, and very poor quality nutrition, but they still get that healthy aura that comes along with whole grains, low sodium, and unsaturated fats.
ETA: thought I'd better mention that I don't think this is how she determines what's good using nutrivore . Obviously she looks at all nutrients, not just the few that Guiding Stars uses (or some of the other good/bad food rating criteria out there)