Meet Our First NuVal Dad Mike DuBoard!

NuVal Dad, Mike DuBoard

Mike DuBoard, a drive-time DJ at WNCY in Green Bay, Wisconsin, was no stranger to being fit. A former paratrooper, the 48-year-old father of seven exercised five to six times a week. Despite this, he had a diet that he admitted “wasn’t that great,” and it caught up with him. In addition to high cholesterol and high blood pressure, Mike received scary news—one of the arteries in his heart was 90 percent blocked, and he needed surgery to put in a stent.

“I wanted to get healthier,” he said. “I knew I had to be careful of my sodium and my saturated fat intake.”

In his quest for better health, Mike turned to the NuVal® Nutritional Scoring System at his local Festival Foods store. Mike became familiar with the system and learned how, at a glance, NuVal scores could tell him about the nutritional quality of the food he was buying. And what he found redefined “sticker shock.”

“I was surprised at some of the scores in salad dressings,” he said. “Even if they were low-fat, they were loaded with sugar. With the marketing of (food) products, you have to be careful.”

Mike praised NuVal Scores for how easy they were to use and fit into his grocery shopping.

“With NuVal Scores, I know what it is I’m getting,” he said. “They just made it so much easier for me, instead of having to read every single label.”

Mike said he loved having a system that simply gave him the information he needed when it comes to nutrition: a single score for each food between 1 to 100 that told him the nutritional quality in an instant.

“We sure get fooled a lot at the grocery store, and NuVal is there to cut through it,” he said.

And the result? After about eight months having the NuVal System guide his choice in groceries, Mike has lost weight and gained energy and muscle mass. In less than a year, not only has Mike brought his high blood pressure under control, but his cholesterol went from a 460 to 150 (no, that isn’t a typo).

Mike’s taken to the NuVal system so much, he has written about it in his blog and has even produced a video about his experience with NuVal with Festival Foods.“I shop at Festival Foods, but I have become an outspoken supporter of NuVal because of my own story. The Festival dietitians are great,” Mike said. “Using NuVal makes me a huge fan of Festival Foods.”

“I’m sincerely a fan, and I think NuVal is the best,” he said. “It’s my new best friend!”