It Pays to Eat Right: Newton Company Partners with Employers to Provide Healthy Eating Incentives

Imagine yourself on a typical grocery shopping trip. When you grab for a bag of potato chips, do you consider getting something healthier instead?

Most probably don’t. We just throw those chips in the carriage and go on to the next thing on our lists. But a Newton-based company is hoping to change that for employees in Massachusetts.

And they’re offering you money to do so.

• Tell us in the comments: Would you eat more vegetables if you got paid for it?

Or, to be more accurate, they’re encouraging your employer to offer you money for making better health decisions. And some employers have already bitten.

Nutrisavings, 320 Nevada St., partners with employers, health plans, wellness programs and grocery stores like Stop & Shop, Hannaford, Roche Bros., Wegmans, Shaw’s, and Kmart, to establish a wellbeing program at participating businesses.

Here’s how it works:

An employer or health insurance company signs up with Nutrisavings. Then the employees or customers of that business have the option to enroll in Nutrisavings’s wellness program, which usually comes with incentives.

Program participants are given a rewards card or unique ID that will record their score after each grocery trip. Then they just go shopping.

Nutrisavings has a database of brands and products that rates each item you put into your carriage out of 100. Something really sugary or high in fat content would be ranked as zero while something healthier like fruits or vegetables would get a 100.

Some businesses, like Harvard Pilgrim Health, have already begun using Nutrisavings, according to boston.com.

Harvard Pilgrim Health employees can earn $10 a month simply for shopping at a participating grocery store. They earn another $10 for a score 60 or higher.

Nutrisavings encourages employers to offer the program because healthier employees make a more focuses and productive workforce, the company said on its website.

Employees enrolled in the program believe this as well.

“It’s great—it really does make you think,” Harvard Pilgrim Health employee Joan Fallon told boston.com. “Like, ‘Are you sure you want to put that bag of potato chips in your bag?’

Read more at Boston.com.

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