Health Star Rating system relaunched
Posted by Webmaster | Filed under News Bites, Spotlight—Food in focus
The Assistant Minister for Health Fiona Nash, has launched a website as part of phase one of an education campaign to accompany the Health Star Rating system. The original site was pulled down hours after launching in February 2014 and the program stalled due to food industry objections.
The Health Star Rating is a front-of-pack labelling system that rates the overall nutritional profile of packaged food and assigns it a rating from 1/2 a star to 5 stars—the more stars, the healthier the choice.
Although most products on supermarket shelves carry a Nutrition Information Panel, the aim of the Health Star rating system is to provide a quick, easy and standard way to compare similar packaged foods.
The implementation will be a slow one, however; use of the system is voluntary and packaging only needs to be updated over the next 5 years.
Published at the beginning of each season, Sprout is a celebration of local food, producers and cuisine. It is about living sustainably through promoting fresh, seasonal produce from local farms and encouraging people to make a difference by growing their own food and making sustainable food choices.