Sour on star ratings

Food standards don’t tell full story on added sugar: Choice

CHOICE is demanding a major change to Australia’s star rating system for food, saying consumers are being denied the full picture when it comes to added sugar.

The consumer advocacy group says there is a serious flaw in the current system, which is meant to make it easy for shoppers to make healthier choices at a glance.

Most people would be familiar with the star rating on packets of many common manufactured foods, from cereals and snack bars to yoghurt and ready-made meals.

Products are assessed and given a rating from half-a-star, up to five. More stars mean more positive nutrients and fewer of the ones that are considered risky.

But Choice has a big problem with the existing algorithm used to assess sugar content because it makes no distinction between natural sugar, and sugar added during manufacturing.

That means consumers have a false sense of a product’s status as healthy, or not, Choice’s food policy expert Linda Przhedetsky says.

Choice has released its own modelling to more heavily penalise foods heavy in added sugar – and the results are dramatic, especially for some topselling cereals.

Under Choice’s tougher algorithm, Kellogg’s NutriGrain and Nestle’s Milo cereal lost 2.5 of their four stars, putting them firmly in the camp of not-so-healthy.

Other products increased their star rating, gaining extra points for drawing their sweetness from natural sources.

Choice supports the star rating system, which is currently under review, but says its clear changes are needed.

The group also wants the voluntary star rating system made mandatory for all food and drinks. And it says manufacturers must be forced to list added sugars as a proportion of total sugars, in the same way saturated fats must be listed as a proportion of total fats.