As debate continues over whether to make the Health Star Rating on food packaging mandatory, Claire Turnbull outlines the strengths and limitations of the star system and highlights a group of essential healthy foods that will never have any stars at all.
If you’re confused about what is actually healthy in the supermarket and what’s not, you are not alone. All the claims, icons and ever-changing packaging designs can make it incredibly difficult to work out what is actually healthy to eat.
Twenty years ago, I used to run supermarket tours as part of my role as a dietitian at Diabetes New Zealand. I helped people navigate the aisles – what to put in the trolley, what to leave on the shelf, and how to read between the marketing lines. Later, I ran similar tours for gym-goers keen to fuel their training, and for busy parents just trying to get dinner on the table without overthinking it. And honestly? I’m not sure it’s any simpler today than it was back then.
One thing that has been introduced since my supermarket tour days is the voluntary front-of-pack Health Star Rating (HSR) system that launched in 2014. The vision was to help make it easier for us here in New Zealand and Australia to make healthier choices.
According to the 2024 NZ Food Safety Consumer Insights Survey, 83% of shoppers say they use Health Stars at least some of the time when buying a new product. Yet opinions remain divided – and so does manufacturer uptake.
A recent monitoring report found that voluntary uptake of HSR in New Zealand was well below the 70% target, sitting at 36%, and in Australia it's not much better at 39%. As a result, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) is now planning to run two rounds of public consultation to decide whether this labelling system should become mandatory.
But would more stars on more packages really lead to healthier eating?
Here's what I recommend considering when you're weighing whether or not to toss a food product in your trolley.
How the stars are allocated
Packaged foods are given a score of between 0.5 stars and 5 stars, based on their overall nutritional profile. Foods get more stars if they are lower in energy (kilojoules), saturated fat, sodium and sugar, and higher in fibre, protein and fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes.
The idea is that the star score gives shoppers a quick way to compare similar packaged foods at a glance. A cereal with 4 stars should, in theory, be a better choice than one with 2.5.
However, from my experience, few people understand the critical point that the system was designed to compare products within the same category – breakfast cereal with other breakfast cereals, yoghurt with other yoghurts and so on. Not to compare a muesli bar with a bag of carrots. Something to keep in mind.
Remember: many of the healthiest foods have no stars
This system ranks foods using an algorithm, which means it's limited and shouldn’t be used to replace the bigger picture of what we know about nutrition and wellbeing. Whole, minimally processed foods, many of which you won’t currently see any stars on, like fresh fruit and vegetables, lean meat, fish, eggs, pulses, unsweetened yoghurt, plain nuts and seeds are still absolutely the best base when it comes to what to eat most of the time.
Of the packaged foods you do buy, the health stars shouldn’t be relied on to determine how much of a food you should eat or how often to have it.
Don't forget to factor in processing
Another thing to be mindful of is that the number of stars currently doesn’t take into consideration how processed a food is. This is why something can have a large number of ingredients on the back and be considered ultra-processed, yet still do OK on the star scale.
I therefore highly recommend you look at the back of a package to see how long a product's ingredients list is and how processed it is, and factor that into your choice too.
Beware of the health halo
Not all foods with high stars are foods you should be eating everyday. Chips made from peas that are ground and puffed with salt added, for example, are not as close to peas from the pod as you might like to imagine.
Also, many highly processed products adjust their ingredients specifically to increase their star rating. Extra inulin (chicory root) can be added to boost the fibre content, or wheat germ to boost the protein.
On one hand, it is great to see companies taking steps to improve the nutritional composition of their products. But as a consumer, it's essential to be aware that when a product has added fibre in the form of inulin, this doesn’t make it as good a source of fibre as a simple whole food like plain rolled oats, veggies with their skin on, or brown rice, any of which would be more beneficial to your health.
There is no perfect way
When it comes to trying to work out a system to categorise food, there's no easy way to get it right, and no universal agreement on how best to do it.
Around the world, more than 50 countries have systems in place, with at least 15 countries making this labelling mandatory. These range from a traffic-light system in the UK, to the A-E Nutri-Score in France, and black warning labels on some foods in Mexico. All of these systems have their pros and cons.
The most important thing is to understand the system, take the bits that work, and leave the bits that don’t.
Become a label reader (gradually)
If you want to learn more about your food, here is my best tip after 25 years of doing this: Become your own researcher.
Each week when you go to the supermarket, make it your mission to take a deep dive into just one category of food products.
One week it could be cereals: turn the packets around and take a look at which ones contain a lot of added sugar, which have a long list of additives, and which ones keep it relatively simple. You might decide you're better off making your own muesli, or sticking to porridge. Or maybe you reduce the muesli you love (but which turns out to be a sugar-fest) to a weekend-only treat, or you start to mix it half-and-half with plain rolled oats.
The next week look at canned foods, the one after frozen fish. This reduces the overwhelm of trying to do everything all at once and turns the process of learning more about food into a journey.
Over time, you will become much more familiar with what is really in your food and how to make the choices that are best for you.
Happy shopping!
Claire Turnbull is a registered nutritionist with an honours degree in dietetics, a wellbeing educator and author.
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