In the last two weeks, I’ve had multiple parents ask me my thoughts on the Health Star Rating system that we have used here in New Zealand since 2015. I have been sharing more and more about the ingredients in our food and how as parents, we have to arm ourselves with knowledge as power so we know exactly what impact different foods have on our health.

The Health Star Rating system uses a rating scale of 0.5 to 5 stars. The idea of the system is so consumers can look at two food products side by side and know that foods with more stars are healthier than foods with fewer stars.

The Ministry for Primary Industries NZ say, “you can trust the Health Star Ratings you see on packaged foods.”

I’m here to dive deeper into exactly why I don’t rely on this system for my food purchasing decisions.

1. Firstly, companies can choose to have the star rating on their products. It’s optional. Which means that we’re only seeing the rating of some products - and not others. If we had star ratings on every single food item, I can imagine some would be in negative ratings given the ingredients in the products. According to Consumer NZ, this means that companies can “still cherry pick their “best-performing” products and avoid putting stars on their worst.”

2. The way star ratings are calculated is by assessing the positive nutrients (positive according to the New Zealand Eating and Activity Guidelines (EAG)) of a food product (like protein, dietary fibre, fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes) against the negative nutrients (like energy, saturated fat, sugars, sodium). Negative points can be partially offset by points accumulated for positive nutrients. Meaning that foods high in sugar can still receive a high health star rating depending on the other ingredients in there.

3. The nutrients that have been classed as negative have been done so by the New Zealand Eating and Activity Guidelines (EAG). While I agree that we should be minimising our refined sugar consumption (I was once an ambassador for That Sugar Film, did you know that?), I’m not convinced about the inclusion of saturated fat in there. When it comes to fat, the source of the fat is what matters. And we know that children's bodies and brains need a constant supply of fat, with their nervous systems being composed of more than 60% fats (another blog post coming on this soon). Although historically we've been told that fat, particularly saturated fat is bad, what we now know is that industrial seed oils, such as canola, corn, grapeseed, soybean, safflower, sunflower, and vegetable oils are the ones we want to minimise. There is an exception with saturated fats - and all fats - it matters about where they are coming from. There are saturated fats to avoid too, especially trans-fats which are polyunsaturated oils that should be soft at room temperature but their structure has been modified (transformed = trans) by having hydrogen forced into them (hydrogenated), which makes them solid at room temperature. These sensitive polyunsaturated oils are artificially saturated, creating trans fats that are extremely damaging and disruptive to hormone production, among other things.

So what do we do?

This is the exact reason why I love teaching parents and empowering them with the knowledge they need to go to supermarket and feel absolute confidence with the products they are buying. The health star rating system is not a reliable source of guidance for us, the only guidance we can ever truly rely on, is what comes from within us.

We need to arm ourselves with the knowledge and information so when we are faced with choosing foods to nourish our family so they can thrive, we can do it without hesitation. So we know the foods we’re investing in with our money, are also investing in our health.

If you feel ready to become a supermarket detective and know exactly what foods to buy to nourish your family, my 8-week signature program, Nourished Child, has been made for you. Click here to learn more about how you can transform your family’s health in just eight weeks.