The current system is confusing and doesn’t discriminate between products with different sodium levels: review
By Geir O’Rourke, Australian Doctor
Australia’s five-star food nutritional labelling program needs an urgent revamp to ensure fruit and vegetables are clearly marked as healthy, a major review has found.
The Federal Government’s Health Star Rating system is meant to help consumers make healthy food choices by allowing manufacturers to voluntarily place an independently calculated, easy-to-read nutritional score on their packaging.
With its logo now on some 5448 products, the program has been billed as a win-win for public health and the food industry because it gives manufacturers a marketing tool for their healthy products and people a source of simple nutritional advice in supermarket aisles.
But a government-commissioned review of the system has found major flaws in how the system calculates its scores out of five stars.
According to the review, released on Monday, current system did not effectively discriminate between products with different sodium levels, with large changes required to have an impact on their scores.
“This means that products could have quite different sodium levels but receive the same Health Star Rating,” the review stated.
“It may also be a disincentive for manufacturers to reformulate to reduce sodium, as large and unrealistic decreases may be required before an increase in the Health Star Rating is achieved.”
The review found the ratings of about 440 products should be reduced because they were high in sugar, sodium and unhealthy fat.
It also criticised the ratings of fruit and vegetables — which varied so that raspberries received five stars, while pineapples received four — claiming it was confusing and was different from dietary guidelines.
All whole fruit and vegetables should be automatically given five stars to encourage their consumption.
All up, 820 fruit, vegetable and dairy products – about 15% of the current total – should have their ratings increased, it said.
The system has drawn criticism from public health groups since its inception.
Milo chocolate milk powder, which contains 46% sugar, was notoriously granted 4.5 stars under the scheme, based on a suggested serving of three teaspoons of Milo in a cup of skim milk.
Milo’s manufacturer Nestle removed the rating from its packaging in March 2018 after an outcry from public health groups, who argued it should have been rated with 1.5 stars based on how most people really consumed the product.
At the time, Nestle said the removal of the rating was a temporary measure pending the outcome of the review.
Professor Mark Lawrence of Deakin University’s Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition said it was worthy to try and improve the system, but problems in the review’s analysis meant its recommendations would not be sufficient to correct the flaws.
“It recognises the importance of dietary guidelines but then its analysis ignored and misrepresented critical evidence, and consequently the system it proposes would likely continue to be inconsistent with dietary guidelines.
“They have one or two tweaks such as fruit and vegies automatically getting five stars, which is great, but they have not tackled the core problem, which is the system’s inadvertent promotion of discretionary and ultra-processed foods.”
