![]() ![]() “The recently announced decision to adopt a front of pack Health Star Rating food labelling system will be welcomed by many nutrition and public health practitioners as long overdue. ”ĭr Rachael McLean PhD, Senior Lecturer Public Health & Nutrition, University of Otago, comments: However, it is a positive step in the right direction, and one component of a much-needed multi-factorial approach to improving New Zealanders health. “The new front-of-pack Health Star Rating food label on its own is not going to solve our alarming rates of obesity and diet-related disease in New Zealand. In addition, monitoring of how many and which type of products display the new voluntary label, and an evaluation of its cost effectiveness in the ‘real world’ will be important. We are currently recruiting participants for a new study to find out what effect different types of front-of-pack nutrition labels, including the new Star Rating system, have on consumer food purchases. The National Institute for Health Innovation is also working to provide some of the evidence needed. This is positive because current research points to interpretive labels as being best understood by all types of consumers. ![]() “Although there is no evidence of the effectiveness of the new label, the format is interpretive, summarising nutrient and ingredient information to give an overall health score for individual products. The public information campaign accompanying the roll-out of the new label should help consumers to realise there will be anomalies and how best to use it to make healthier choices across the food supply. For example, fruit juice is very high in sugar and receives 4 ½ (out of a possible five) stars. However, it isn’t perfect because the set of rules sitting behind it mean that some foods will receive a star rating that gives the wrong message to consumers. “Extensive testing of the new label has been undertaken with foods available for sale in the New Zealand and Australian food supplies. A nice feature of the new label is that the number of stars given to a product is based on the balance of positive nutrients such as fibre and protein, with adverse nutrients including salt and sugar. It has also been developed with input from a range of stakeholders, including nutrition experts. “The new Health Star Rating food label is based on a robust system used in the UK to determine foods eligible to be marketed to children. “The new Health Star Rating food labelling system will provide New Zealand consumers with a much-needed consistent front-of-pack nutrition label to enable them to compare packaged foods and make healthier choices more easily. However, cost, convenience and other factors mean that packaged foods are often included in our diets. Therefore, in an ideal world we would all be eating predominantly whole, fresh, unprocessed foods. “Packaged foods, especially those which have undergone a lot of processing, tend to be high in adverse nutrients such as saturated fat, salt, and sugar. If you would like to contact a New Zealand expert, please contact the SMC ( Dr Helen Eyles, Research Fellow, National Institute for Health Innovation, The University of Auckland, comments: Feel free to use these quotes in your reporting. The SMC collected the following expert commentary. The Ministry expects it will be six to 12 months before the label starts appearing on shelves. The front-of-pack labels use a five star scale to reflect the nutritional value of the food product.Īccording to the Ministry for Primary Industries the system takes into account four aspects of a food associated with increasing the risk factors for chronic diseases (energy, saturated fat, sodium and total sugars) along with certain ‘positive’ aspects of a food such as fruit and vegetable content, and in some instances dietary fibre and protein content. Minister for Food Safety Nikki Kaye announced that the government will be adopting a new Health Star Rating food labelling system, at the Australian and New Zealand Ministers food forum in Sydney on Friday. Will it lead to healthier choices? Ministry for Primary Industries A new voluntary food labelling system aims to give Australian and New Zealand consumers greater insight in the nutritional value of their food at a glance. ![]()
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