Health
Health Star Ratings: helpful guide or marketing magic trick?
Many Australians rely on the government’s Health Star Rating system to help them make healthy food choices at the supermarket. But not everything is as it seems, writes Sabrina Rogers-Anderson.
By Sabrina Rogers-Anderson
With fast food available on every street corner and supermarket aisles overflowing with ultraprocessed choices, healthy eating can feel like an increasingly complex and radical goal.
To take the guesswork out of food shopping, the Australian Government developed the Health Star Rating system [HSR] in 2014.
A front-of-pack labelling system that assigns 0.5 to 5 stars to packaged foods with a higher number of stars indicating a healthier product, the HSR is meant to help Australians make sound food choices at a glance.
But the truth is that the system has a few fundamental flaws that can lead consumers astray and public health groups are lobbying for it to be reviewed. Here’s everything you need to know.
How are Health Star Ratings calculated?
“The Health Star Rating system assesses components of food considered to increase health risks - energy, saturated fat, sugar and sodium - and offsets these against components considered to decrease risk - protein, fibre, fruit, vegetables, nuts and legumes - to calculate a final score that is converted to a star rating,” explains Jane Martin, Executive Manager of the Food for Health Alliance.
“It’s important to note that the HSR is meant to be used to compare foods within the same category, such as yoghurts with yoghurts and not yoghurts with cereals. Overall, it does work pretty well to guide people to healthier choices within food categories.”
What are the issues with the Health Star Rating system?
Health experts have raised 3 main concerns with the current rating system.
1. It isn’t mandatory
“The HSR is voluntary and the uptake hasn't been growing as expected,” says Jane. “And because it’s voluntary, it's more likely to appear on higher-rating foods. Producers of low-rating foods often choose to leave it off.
“Coles and Woolworths have put it on most of their home-brand foods, but it’s being used much more selectively by other companies. That causes a lot of confusion for the public when it comes to foods such as ready-made meals, muesli bars and yoghurts, some of which are healthy and some of which aren’t.
“With only about a third of products carrying the HSR rating, it makes it difficult for people to adequately compare.”
In fact, research conducted by the George Institute for Global Health in 2024 found that only 36% of intended supermarket products carried an HSR.
That’s significantly lower than the target of 70% that was set to be achieved by mid-November 2025, leading Australian Food Ministers to recommend making the system mandatory.
They suggested that this needs to be conducted in conjunction with a review of the Nutrition Information Panel [NIP].
“Coordination of the work on both the front [HSR] and back [NIP] of packaged foods presents an opportunity to improve all aspects of nutrition labelling including information about added sugars,” the Food Ministers wrote in a July 2024 communique. “This will support consumers to feel informed and empowered in making choices about food.”
2. It doesn’t distinguish between natural and added sugars
Sugars that are naturally present in fruits, vegetables and milk aren’t detrimental to our health, but they become so when they’re processed to make products such as fruit juice.
“Once a natural sugar is processed, it becomes a free sugar,” says Jane. “The World Health Organization says we should be reducing free sugars in our diet [no more than 10% of total energy intake], but the HSR currently assesses sugars that are processed from fruits and vegetables as positive.
“These sugars should be penalised because they have the same negative health effects as other added sugars. They're simply not the same as whole fruits or whole vegetables anymore.”
3. Ultraprocessed food producers are gaming the system
Research conducted by the George Institute for Global Health in 2024 found that many food companies “game” the HSR system by adding nutrients such as fibre and protein to ultraprocessed foods to increase their score.
Read this too: 4 ultraprocessed foods to take off your shopping list
They also use artificial sweeteners to reduce the sugar content of their products – even though the World Health Organization cautions against the use of sugar substitutes because they may increase the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and early death.
Another trick food producers use involves reducing salt and fat content to boost HSR scores. But no matter how many nutrients are added or removed, ultraprocessed foods don’t become any healthier.
Once the ingredients have been chemically transformed, they carry a range of health risks, including cancer, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, mental health issues and early death.
By manipulating these loopholes in the scoring system, many ultraprocessed food manufacturers manage to land surprisingly high HSRs for their products.
Researchers from Deakin University's Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition discovered that 73% of ultraprocessed foods and 53% of discretionary foods (which are not essential for meeting nutrient needs but aren’t ultraprocessed) displayed a HSR of 2.5 stars or more.
Some products with artificially inflated HSRs include:
- Berri Quelch 99% Fruit Juice Icy Tubes - 5 stars
- Uncle Toby's Milk & Oats Vanilla Flavour Milk Protein Crisps Bar - 4.5 stars
- Streets Blue Ribbon Vanilla Bean Reduced Fat Ice Cream - 4.5 stars
- SPC Orange Flavoured Jelly with Diced Peaches - 4 stars
- Arnott's Tiny Teddy Oat & Honey Biscuits - 4 stars
This led researchers from the George Institute for Global Health to modify the HSR algorithm to deduct or cap points awarded to ultraprocessed foods, bringing it more in line with the globally recognised NOVA food classification system.
Here’s what they found:
The George Institute is now calling for the Health Star Rating algorithm to be updated to reflect these more accurate scores for ultraprocessed foods.
Improving the Health Star Rating’s visibility
According to Jane, the HSR could also use a makeover when it comes to visibility and legibility.
“There are a number of ways the design could be enhanced to help people see it better on food packaging,” she says. “It could have a minimum required size or be colour-coded to represent its score with healthier items being green and unhealthier ones being red.
“Many older people find the nutrition information panel difficult to read, so a clearly visible Heath Star Rating on the front of the package would be beneficial.”
How to make healthy food choices
Until amendments are made to the scoring system and it becomes mandatory, Jane suggests a multifaceted approach to choosing packaged foods.
“Despite its limitations, the HSR works pretty well on the whole as an interpretive front-of-pack system,” she says.
“The nutrition information panel is also an important adjunct to look at things like total sugars and the number of ingredients. If a product has a lot of ingredients and numbers and names you don't recognise, skip it and choose something with fewer ingredients and more familiar names. I'd also stay away from high amounts of saturated fat and sodium.
“There are some helpful apps too. With FoodSwitch, you scan a product and it suggests other products that are lower in nutrients of concern and higher in healthy nutrients.”
Making the right food choices
While the HSR system might be flawed, it can still help you make better food choices at a glance. If in doubt about the validity of a product’s score, investigate further before adding it to your cart.
Feature image: iStock/Drazen Zigic
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