Fairfax’s Peter FitzSimons has penned a thought-provoking piece on the government’s farcical Health Star Rating system, which is now under review:
Last week the government announced it would be conducting a review of its Health Star Rating System on food products…
Can I go first? It is freaking hopeless. Get rid of it. Call in Joe’s Bulldozers and start again.
Why? Look, I could write a 10,000 word dissertation on how Big Food and Big Sugar have wrapped their tentacles and exerted their influence around what should be an entirely independent process, but do you need to know much more than the following?
Under the system, straight milk gets four stars, while Up & Go – with added, to use the specialised term – gunk – gets four and a half stars! Low-fat strawberry flavoured milk also gets four and a half stars! Some packets of chips even get four stars!
But packaged smoked salmon? Let’s give that three and a half stars, while plain natural Greek yoghurt falls away to one and half stars. The Coles brand beer-battered frozen steak house chips get four stars. Milo, which is just under half sugar, gets four and half stars. Nutri-Grain, which is about a third sugar, gets four stars. Commercial fruit juice, depending on the brand, gets between four and five stars. And yet the World Health Organisation classifies fruit juice as containing “free” sugars that need to be restricted. So while as reputable an organisation as WHO says, “Don’t drink it, Freddie”, in Australia the government says it is about the healthiest thing you can drink. Bullshit. Water is.
All up, notice a trend here?
While the science is in, and there is no doubt that the healthiest option is to choose simple, unprocessed food over processed food with endless crap added, the current Health Star system steers the masses from the edge of the supermarket where you can get the fresh products of Australian farmers to the long aisles where you get the products of Big Food and Big Sugar…
How did the system get so corrupted?
Broadly, because its foundations are so flaky.
Let’s start with the fact that the food industry sits on the freaking advisory panel! Yup, I know. Ludicrous…
The system is based on nutrients, not whole foods…
Any health star system that doesn’t identify added sugar as the prime culprit is not serious…
I have raised similar concerns about the Health Star Rating system previously. Consider the following farcical examples:
How is it that natural virgin coconut oil receives only a half star health rating (because it contains over 90% saturated fat):
And natural full fat Greek yogurt receives only 1.5 stars:
When sugary low fat yogurt receives a 3-star health rating:
The farce is even worse when it comes to cereals. Check-out the below highly processed cereals that receive a healthy 4-star rating despite each containing more than 20% sugar:
Or maybe you are too busy to eat cereal? No worries. Just down a processed sugary chocolate-flavoured “Up and Go” milkshake, which receives a farcical 4.5-star health rating:
Or a 26.8 grams per serve of sugar glass of processed apple juice, which receives a 5-star rating:
Or a sugary processed “Roll-up”, which contains 26.7% sugar, but somehow still manages a 3-star rating:
Or a couple of sugary muesli bars, which receive a 4-star rating despite containing around 20% sugar:
And last but not least, how does Milo receive a healthy 4.5 star health rating when it is made up of nearly half sugar?
Rather than promoting a farcical Health Star Ratings system, Australia’s policy makers should simply encourage Australians to avoid packaged and processed foods in favour of natural whole foods.
