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April 14, 2026 \u2014 7:00pm<\/p>\n
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n Save this article for later<\/p>\n Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime.<\/p>\n Got it<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n Examine, a free weekly newsletter covering science with a sceptical, evidence-based eye, is sent every Tuesday. You\u2019re reading an excerpt \u2013 sign up to get the whole newsletter in your inbox<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last month, Kate Aubusson and I covered a new paper<\/a> arguing that multinational corporations were the world\u2019s deadliest \u201cvectors of disease\u201d: corporate mosquitos spreading obesity, lung cancer and microplastics.<\/p>\n One line jumped out to a lot of readers: a mention that the food health star system had been co-designed by the food industry and was, to quote a professor of food politics, \u201cdeeply flawed\u201d.<\/p>\n Health stars have been with us for more than 10 years now. About four in every 10 products<\/a> wear them on the front of the box (they will become mandatory<\/a> in the next few years).<\/p>\n My morning bowl of muesli gets 4.5 stars. My favourite muesli bar gets four. I get to feel smug about my good choices. A lot of readers apparently feel the same.<\/p>\n So \u2026 what do you mean, the star ratings are \u201cdeeply flawed\u201d?<\/p>\n Stars of the show<\/p>\n Health star ratings have a torturous history. Originally, they were meant to be mandatory traffic lights<\/a>; that later became the star-ratings system.<\/p>\n The food industry was initially on board, but some soon got cold feet. They and public health advocates lobbied ministers and the media, and eventually, in 2014, the government approved a non-mandatory Health Star Ratings system.<\/p>\n Health stars are self-determined by food manufacturers in a multi-step calculation.<\/p>\n Related Article Step 1: Are you selling water or fresh fruit or vegetables? No need to go further, you get an automatic five-star rating<\/p>\n Step 2: Work out which category your product is \u2013 food or beverage, dairy or non-dairy, fat or oil or cheese.<\/p>\n Step 3: Put in your \u201cnegative points\u201d \u2013 the energy, saturated fat, sugar and sodium levels.<\/p>\n Step 4: Put in your \u201cpositive points\u201d \u2013 fibre, protein and the percentage of fruits, nuts, vegetables and legumes your product contains. And voila! You get between 0.5 and five health stars.<\/p>\n Why does protein get extra points, especially given Australians tend to eat enough protein already<\/a>, and not enough of a range of other nutrients? The theory<\/a> was animal-based protein (meat) tends to be high in other key nutrients such as iron and calcium; we\u2019ll see the problems this creates in a moment.<\/p>\n You can play with the calculator here<\/a>, making up all sorts of Franken-foods. You\u2019ll quickly see how increasing protein or fibre levels can ramp up your health star rating.<\/p>\n Do they work?<\/p>\n Your new Franken-food is a clue to a key criticism of health star ratings \u2013 that they fall victim to \u201cnutritionism\u201d, focusing more on individual nutrients within a food than the actual healthiness of that food.<\/p>\n Related Article \u201cIt\u2019s not really assessing the form of the foods,\u201d says Dr Sarah Dickie, a public health nutritionist and researcher at Monash University. \u201cA lot of ultra-processed foods can get through this system because they can add isolated forms of fibre and protein. Protein shakes have five stars.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s this idea you can have high salt, sugar, fat, and if you add enough of something else good it masks the idea that it\u2019s high in sugar \u2013 but no, it\u2019s still high in sugar.\u201d<\/p>\n And food companies have \u201cgamed\u201d the star system, public health researchers allege.<\/p>\n \u201cThe worst offenders \u2026 basically offset their high salt and sugar content by pumping things full of protein,\u201d says Associate Professor Alexandra Jones, leader of the food governance program at the George Institute for Global Health, an independent medical research organisation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe particularly see this in protein bars and breakfast cereals, because they are the kind of food where you can do that.\u201d When measures become targets, you can get perverse results<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dr Duncan Craig, director of health at the Australian Food and Grocery Council, did not respond directly to the allegations the food industry was gaming the system, but did defend the stars.<\/p>\n \u201cHealth Star Rating is built on decades of nutrition science. A higher Health Star Rating reflects higher levels of positive nutrition \u2013 including fibre, protein, fruit, vegetables, nut and legume content and lower levels of saturated fat, sugar and sodium,\u201d he said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n Part of the point<\/a> of health star ratings was to encourage the food industry to make healthier foods \u2013 is it really fair to call that process \u201cgaming\u201d?<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the ultra-processed problem. Almost half <\/a>the food we eat is industrially formulated, using precise combinations of nutrients chemically extracted from source foods, plus chemical additives.<\/p>\n A very-large meta-analysis published in the BMJ in 2024<\/a> linked exposure to these foods to higher rates of diabetes, cardiovascular mortality and negative mental health outcomes.<\/p>\n The argument here is these processed foods are bad for us, not just because of what they contain but also because of how they are made. The star algorithm doesn\u2019t consider that.<\/p>\n Associate Professor Phillip Baker, who researches ultra-processed foods at the University of Sydney, points to liquid-breakfast drinks, which often get high health stars. \u201cYet it\u2019s full of all sorts of food additives,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s about as ultra-processed as you can get. It\u2019s not really food.\u201d<\/p>\n The Grocery Council\u2019s Craig rejected the suggestion the stars should consider whether a food is ultra-processed.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no single agreed scientific definition for this term, and the level of processing is a poor and often misleading guide for determining healthier dietary choices.\u201d<\/p>\n Everyone I spoke to agrees the ratings can be improved. But are they fatally flawed?<\/p>\n As with most measures, the test we should apply to health stars is whether they actually tell us something meaningful <\/a>about the healthiness of food.<\/p>\n In a 2018 paper<\/a>, the George Institute\u2019s Alexandra Jones showed that they do. Her team compared the health star ratings of 47,116 products with their \u201ccore\u201d or \u201cdiscretionary\u201d status under the Australian Dietary Guidelines. Core foods form the basis of the guidelines\u2019 healthy diet; discretionary foods are not necessary for health, and are high in salt, fat, sugars or alcohol.<\/p>\n Overall, \u201ccore\u201d foods in Jones\u2019 study had a median star rating of four and discretionary foods a median rating of two. The exceptions tended to be snacks with high amounts of salt and dried, fried or pickled vegetables, which tended to score highly despite being high in negative nutrients.<\/p>\n \u201cIn contrast to intense media attention on occasional anomalies, this large quantitative analysis suggests that the scope of genuine misalignment \u2026 is very small,\u201d the paper concludes.<\/p>\n Because health stars are not mandatory, food companies \u2013 unsurprisingly \u2013 are much less likely to put low ratings on the box<\/a>, evidence suggests. That feels like the real system gaming.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s useful to know \u2013 because if you\u2019re considering a box of food without a rating, there\u2019s a good chance it\u2019s not real healthy.<\/p>\n But Jones says we shouldn\u2019t get too hung up on scouring packages for star ratings. \u201cWhat we care about with diets is overall dietary patterns \u2013 so I usually tell people to remember most of the best stuff (fresh fruit and veg) doesn\u2019t come in a pack and won\u2019t have stars. Use stars once you\u2019ve made your shopping list to pick a better yoghurt, dip, sauce, what not. And don\u2019t get too hung up on the rest.\u201d<\/p>\n The Examine newsletter explains and analyses science with a rigorous focus on the evidence. Sign up to get it each week<\/a>.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n Contact him via email or Signal (encrypted) liammannix.18Connect via X<\/a>, Facebook<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 14, 2026 \u2014 7:00pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[103,61,60,446],"class_list":{"0":"post-398579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-nutrition"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Health](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/7149603d4d0e561e1f8d8429616ee15b932ecfa9.jpeg\")
Health stars on several brands of cereal.<\/p>\n![\"Four](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0b6aa9c9bdd395790087ac4ac4844cbfe4ccaacf.jpeg\")
Four stars!Peter Braig<\/p>\n![\"If](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/51477a541ddbf3d8c9483dd53324a1d34d9b127f.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Ultra-processed](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/9bf8e05a4d78487fc7f85010cc1c7dc6da41417a.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Liam](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776201434_794_a55f4ee0b9c218ce5f284dc1bccff92e638b76db.png\")
Liam Mannix<\/a> is an investigative journalist at The Age. Before that, he was national science reporter for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. <\/p>\n