What is the ONQI?

The Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI) is an algorithm designed to generate a single, summative score for the “overall nutritional quality” of a food based on its micronutrient and macronutrient composition and several other of its nutritional properties (e.g., energy density). The ONQI is further designed to stratify foods into a rank order of relative nutritiousness both universally (i.e., across all food categories) and within specific food categories (e.g., breads, cereals, frozen desserts, etc.), while avoiding the characterization of any food as “good” or “bad” in absolute terms.

The ONQI enables the “average shopper” to choose foods on the basis of overall nutritional quality with the ease and fidelity of top nutrition experts.

It is designed to have applications at point of purchase in retail supermarkets, on food packaging, in restaurants, in
print materials (e.g., books, periodicals), and on-line.

Griffin Hospital news release

Topco news release (PDF)