Kroger Launches App for Healthier Grocery Shopping

It's called OptUP.
Image may contain Human Person Market Grocery Store Shop Supermarket and Plant
Bloomberg/Getty Images

Grocery chain Kroger has launched a free app aimed at helping customers know more about what they're putting in their cart. It's called OptUP, Supermarket News reported on Tuesday, and it gives each grocery item a score based on how healthy it is.

According to Supermarket News, OptUP works like this: When you scan a product with the app, it gets a score out of 100. The healthier the product, the higher the score, with items separated into green (71 or higher), yellow (36 to 70), and red (35 or below) categories. The scoring system is based on the product's nutritional/health value, which Kroger determines from a combination of "nationally recognized dietary guidelines" and information provided by its own dietitians. This means that variables like how much saturated fat, sodium, sugar, calories, fiber, and protein would all go toward determining the item's score.

Groceries aren't the only things getting a score from OptUP. Supermarket News reported that the app will also assign a total score of up to 1,000 to customers' purchasing histories over a period of eight weeks. According to the outlet, Kroger's dietitians recommend filling at least half of your cart with "green" items and getting a total score of 600 or more.

OptUP joins several existing apps that scan items to give you more information about their nutritional value. As Epicurious previously reported, BagIQ scans both receipts and barcodes of grocery items to assign products a "score" based on nutrition labels. Meanwhile, DietSensor, according to Mental Floss, uses a spectrometer to scan the food itself using infrared light.