The Health Star Rating system will be mandatory on all packaged foods in Australia after ministers agreed the voluntary system was not working.
The government-led front-of-pack nutrition label was introduced in 2014 as a simple way to compare the overall nutritional quality of products on the shelf, as recommended by the World Health Organization.
However, the system was co-designed with the food industry and was not mandatory. As a result, researchers warned it was “working great” as a marketing tool for food manufacturers who were able to use it selectively – putting it on products that score well and leaving it off those that don’t.
In 2019 the food ministers agreed to consider mandating health star ratings if an uptake target of 70% of products by 14 November 2025 was not met.
The packaged food industry failed to meet this target, with labels appearing on just 37% of packaged foods that should carry the rating.
The food, agricultural and health ministers voted to mandate the health system on Friday morning, after years of urging from peak health bodies.
A communique from the meeting stated the “ministers expressed concern that the low uptake has limited the system’s effectiveness and undermined consumer trust.”
As a result of the meeting, the ministers asked Food Standards Australia New Zealand, the food regulatory agency, to draft the legislation to make it mandatory.
Leading health bodies such as the Australian Medical Association (AMA), VicHealth and the George Institute for Global Health welcomed the move as an opportunity to strengthen Australia’s food labelling system and improve community health.
Dr Danielle McMullen, the president of the AMA, said “clear, front-of-pack labelling like Health Star Ratings allows busy Australians to see how healthy a product is at a glance”.
“With diet-related diseases placing growing pressure on our health system, mandating Health Star Ratings is a simple, evidence-based step that will support better nutrition across the community,” McMullen said.
Sign up: AU Breaking News email
The rating, from half a star to five stars, is calculated based on an algorithm that factors in seven nutrients – points are lost for energy, saturated fat, sugar and salt content but can be gained back for protein, fibre and fruit/vegetable content.
However, researchers have previously warned the rating system co-designed with industry is not perfect as food companies have exploited the ratings’ focus on nutrients as a way of marketing their poor quality, ultra-processed products – for example replacing sugar with an artificial sweetener.
A report published by the George Institute for Global Health in 2024 found by adding synthetic fibres, proteins and artificial sweeteners, food companies can inflate the rating of unhealthy foods.
Prof Alexandra Jones from the George Institute for Global Health, who has been working with major health groups for years pushing to mandate the system, said she understands legislation will now be drafted and could take at least 12 months.
While the rollout of the mandatory scheme will take time, Jones said this will give experts an opportunity to review the algorithm in the early parts of the implementation period “to hopefully close some of the loopholes in the score itself”.
“We also have a new dietary guidelines anticipated at the end of this year, and we’re hoping those guidelines are going to say more about ultra processing, and so that would be the best trigger to get some more consideration of processing in the health star algorithm as well,” Jones said.
