A public health conference in Sydney heard that the Australian Health Star Rating system is flawed because it is voluntary, which means the food industry only places it on their healthier products.A public health conference in Sydney heard that the Australian Health Star Rating system is flawed because it is voluntary, which means the food industry only places it on their healthier products.
“We know it’s very risky business to get into a partnership with the food industry,” Patay said at the University of Sydney event, which is examining the way powerful industries influence and harm health. “The Australian government believes they need to work as partners with the food industry, but what we see is these processes are rarely as independent as we need them to be … in reality the food industry hijacks these partnerships and stalls mandatory regulation that we know would actually work.”against the more evidence-based traffic-light labelling system, which uses green, amber and red to easily show levels of fat, saturated fat, sugar and sodium in a product at a glance.
The rating system is flawed because it is voluntary, which means the food industry only places it on their healthier products, she said. In addition, the label is black-and-white, whereas research shows coloured labels are more effective.where there are a lot of government officials who just walk through that door to a job in the food industry, which makes it really difficult for them to stand their ground against the industry during consultations,” Pettigrew said.