What is Eye Q?
Eye Q is a program of food certification that was developed at the CLEVER Eye Institute as a way to help patients learn which foods are nutritionally beneficial for their eyes. Too often, we hear news reports or read articles that tell us that spinach and kale are beneficial to eye health. This is absolutely true, but in reality, people want to eat more than spinach and kale! They want to know what other choices they have and what benefits there are in other foods. Basically people want choices in what they eat, and we want to give them a tool to help them make good choices. Eye Q is a method to take the many different nutritional components in any given food and to rank the value of that food in providing the optimum nutrients for eye health.
What is the meaning of the Eye Q score?
The Eye Q score is a number from 0 to 200 that indicates the eye healthy benefits of a given food at a specified serving size; the higher the number, the healthier the food is for eyes. For labeling purposes, foods that score less than 100 will never be certified as eye healthy, which means that consumers will only see scores between 100 and 200 on packages or advertising. Most foods will have scores between 100 and 150. We do not indicate that scores below 100 are products that are specifically bad for eye health, but only that these products do not have sufficient nutrients to make them helpful.
Can Eye Q be used as a general health or dietary guide?
Some nutrients are not known to be specifically beneficial to eye health, but may be beneficial in other ways for your body in proper amounts. For example, nutrients that are needed for healthy bones are not specifically helpful for healthy eyes. We therefore recommend following a balanced diet for general health and then adjust your diet by following guidelines for specific health conditions, such as following a heart-healthy plan if you have high cholesterol or following the Eye Q guidelines if your concern is for improving or maintaining eye health. Also be aware that Eye Q does not specifically measure calories of food products, although most of the eye healthy foods tend to be low in calories when proper serving sizes are used.