Health Star Ratings – it’s about achieving a balanced diet

15 June 2016

There has been a fair amount of debate recently on the use of the Government’s voluntary Health Star Rating system for packaged foods, and I’d like to take the opportunity to clear up a few misconceptions.

The Ministry for Primary Industries has been involved with the implementation of the Health Star Ratings in New Zealand along with the Ministry of Health.

When we first looked at a front-of-pack labelling system to help kiwis make healthier food choices, we considered a number of options. The key thing was that we wanted something that was consistent with the Ministry of Health’s eating and activity guidelines, which focused on encouraging New Zealand to eat healthy, balanced diets.

While most people already understand that unpackaged foods, such as fruit and veggies, are good for you, it can be a lot harder for people to understand the nutritional value of packaged foods.

Out of all the options, Health Stars was the best way to help people quickly and easily make healthy decisions about packaged foods. The system looks at the overall nutrition of a packaged food and balances the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nutrients and ingredients against each other, instead of just focusing on one ingredient, such as sugar.

It’s important to note that the use of Health Stars is not intended to be used to compare all foods. Instead it is meant to be used when comparing similar foods in the same category, e.g. when comparing one type of breakfast cereal with another.

The system uses ratings of ½ to 5 stars to measure the overall nutritional content and healthiness of packaged foods so consumers can quickly compare similar types of packaged foods to make better informed healthier choices.

The number of stars is calculated based on the energy, saturated fat, salt and sugar, as well as fibre, protein, fruit, vegetable, nut and legume content of packaged foods.

The best advice from health experts has always been the value of moderation. Being healthy is not about focusing on one ingredient and eliminating that from our diets – we want to encourage people to eat a balanced diet and this includes a range of nutrients and foods.

To this end, foods higher in energy, saturated fat, sugar and salt, and lower in fibre or other ‘good’ nutrients, receive fewer stars than those with a better overall nutrient profile.

The Health Star Ratings were never intended to be the only solution to helping consumers eat healthily. Instead, it is only one tool in a suite of tools that can help with healthy eating choices and it is not intended to be used in isolation from other dietary advice.

We recommend consumers also pay attention to further information provided on the Nutrition Information Panel, for example portion sizes, and advice on diet and exercise from the Ministry of Health. For information about a healthy and balanced diet, visit the Health Ed website - https://www.healthed.govt.nz/

Since its introduction, we have seen an increasing number of manufacturers starting to use Health Stars on their products. Both of New Zealand’s main supermarket retailers have also committed to taking up the Health Star Rating system across their home brand products and these are starting to appear on shelves. The Health Star Rating system has also encouraged a number of manufacturers to reformulate their product in order to provide healthier options for their consumers.

In addition, as with all new systems, the Government has a planned review of Health Star Ratings after two years of implementation. We will be starting the review later on this year and this will focus on a range of things including companies’ use of the system and consumer awareness and understanding of the system. This will involve a consumer survey on Health Star Ratings in November. All feedback gathered in the review will help us to improve the system’s usefulness.

Jenny Reid is the Manager for Food Science and Risk Assessment at the Ministry for Primary Industries.

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