The health star rating. A joint Australian state government and public health initiative to get us eating healthier. Should be pretty straight forward right? So why am I so confused? Why do highly processed sugary "foods" get such high star ratings? Let me show you a few products that I looked at today in Coles supermarket. Nutri-grain. 4 health stars! It must be healthy! However, on closer label inspection it is in fact 27% sugar. OR this! Coles Honey Puffed Wheat! 4 health stars! So healthy right? WRONG! 31% sugar. ONE THIRD OF THIS PRODUCT IS SUGAR! Something is wrong here. Let's try some product comparisons. Coles Natural Greek Yoghurt. Made from milk and added cultures. No colours, flavours or added sugar. Gets 1.5 health stars. Compared to: Coles Greek Strawberry Yoghurt. It too contains milk and added cultures like the above Natural Greek Yoghurt except it also contains ADDED sugar..... It gets FOUR health stars! OK lets try another: Beautiful fresh cows milk. No other added ingredients. Four health star rating. Reasonable. Lets compare the plain full cream milk to Sanitarium "Up and Go". Add just a few ingredients that look a little something like this: Filtered water, skim milk powder, cane sugar, wheat maltodextrin, soy protein, vegetable oils (sunflower, canola), vegetable fibre, hi-maize™ starch, corn syrup solids, fructose, cocoa (0.5%), oat flour, mineral (calcium), acidity regulator (332), flavours, vegetable gums (460, 466, 407), stabiliser (452), salt, vitamins (C, niacin, A, B12, B6, B2, B1, folate). And that's four and a HALF stars! Evidently a bit of added sugar, vegetable oils, flavours, and thickeners is a good thing! THEY EVEN HAVE FRUCTOSE LISTED AS AN INGREDIENT! How about........ CREAM! Has one ingredient....... Pasteurized cream. Rating: HALF a star. Add add some sugar, flavours, thickeners and colouring. That's bumped it right up to 3 1/2 stars! Last comparison: Rice cakes. A pantry staple in my house because they have ONE ingredient: whole grain brown rice. 4 star rating. Not bad. Until you realize that the Uncle Toby's "lunchtime favourites" get 4 stars too! And their ingredients list looks a bit like this: Added sugars, vegetable oils, flavours, preservatives, and thickeners. But JUST as healthy as whole grain brown rice. Evidently. This is the research I collated in a thirty minute stroll around the supermarket. Who knows what else is in there! Tiny teddies could cure cancer for all I know! So the star rating system is deeply flawed as we have just witnessed. The system is easily manipulated by manufacturers by dropping the fat content and adding a bit of fibre to bump up the star rating regardless of the added sugar content. Worse yet! Displaying the star rating is voluntary! What manufacturer in their right mind is voluntarily going to advertise that their product is one star? More likely is that they either manipulate the ingredients or just don't display a star rating at all. ** To Coles supermarket's credit, they do put the health star on all their products which is the only way I was able to highlight the ludicrousy of this system** Don't be fooled by the advertising and mummy bloggers out there touting this 5 star system. It is tax payers money wasting at its finest. There is only one way to know whether a product is good for you or not. Read the labels. The less ingredients the better. Keep sugars under 5g per 100g. Avoid any products containing seed oils (canola oil, sunflower oil etc). OR even easier. Shop here: There is no need for labels and star ratings in this section.
The plastic packaging makes me want to clobber someone. But that is a rant for another day. 5 star rating system = shithouse. Rant over. Do you use the 5 star rating system to influence your shopping habits?
0 Comments
|