MAMA C’S ORGANIC TOMATO SAUCE This contains organic tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, and fresh herbs; it’s even refrigerated, so it contains no preservatives. Since Mama C runs an organic operation with a full-time labor force receiving benefits, the score here is superhigh all around, and the label is green.

0-5

6-10

11-15 points

CHOCOLATE FROSTED SUPER KRISPY KRUNCHIES Fifty percent sugar; almost all nutrients come from additives. But it does contain 10 percent of the daily allowance of fiber. It’s barely recognizable as food in any near-natural form, and it’s made from hyper-processed commodity crops. However, workers in the plant are full time and receive benefits (and no animals are harmed), so a couple of points there (environmentally, however, the welfare is negative, so these points are mitigated): 2. Thus, red.

HAPPY FARMS FRESH WHOLE CHICKEN Nutrition is good, but saturated fat pulls the score down to 4. Foodness is also high: you can’t argue with the fact that it’s chicken. But the birds are raised in cages and fed processed food; there’s runoff from the barns; and the working conditions in the processing plant are abysmal. The score of 1 on Welfare pulls the overall score down to the yellow range.

BERT’S BERRIES FROZEN BLUEBERRIES Barely processed fruit is something we can eat as often as we like, which would give this a Nutrition score of 5. On the other hand, it’s not fresh: 4 for Foodness. Although the blueberries are organic, they’re sourced from Chile, where the workers are being paid a dollar a day and little attention is paid to soil quality: 2 for Welfare. Because of those issues, this barely squeaks into the green.

NUTRITION This new scale is essentially a summary of the “nutrition facts” box into one easy-to-understand rating, on a scale of 0 to 5. FOODNESS A measure of how close a product is to being real, unadulterated food. (You might think of it as “natural-ness.”) A piece of fruit gets 5 points, whereas fruit-flavored candy gets 0. WELFARE A measure of the impact of the food’s production on the overall welfare of everything involved: laborers, animals, land, water, air, etc. This rating also accounts for carbon footprint and chemical (pesticide, for example) and drug (like antibiotic) residues.

G.M.O.’S Provided for those consumers (90 percent of Americans, according to polls) who wish to know whether their food contains genetically modified organisms.

TOTAL SCORE When you take all three criteria — Nutrition, Foodness and Welfare — into account, the highest potential high score is 15. Some nonfoods sold in supermarkets — soda, for example — might score 0.

COLOR CODE A visual representation of the total score: eat green-coded food freely; yellow food with restraint or consideration; and red food rarely or never. Of course if you’re more concerned about Welfare than Nutrition, or Foodness than either, you can make your own judgments.

RATING BARS Top score per category: 5. Bottom score: 0.

Labels on Four Made-Up Products