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Kathryn Calvert
Editor NZ FOODTechnology
Welcome to September…and one of the industry’s most exciting months in the past two years. Those taking part in
FoodTech PackTech 2018 will already be planning their stands and working out the best way to attract new business. If you
aren’t involved this year, come along and have a look at what you are missing out. Start with reading our 27 pages of show
coverage – the handy floor plan of exhibitors is on pages 40 and 41 – and make sure you are there in two years’ time. Pop in
and say hello on the FoodTechnology magazine stand…we would love to hear from you and what your business is doing.
Have a great show.
EDITOR'S NOTE
BREAKING NEWS
IT'S ON!
HEALTH STAR RATINGS
FLAWED
“The voluntary nature and the food industrydriven
labelling are a problem,” the AUT
Professor of Public Health and Ministry of
Education chief health and nutrition advisor
says. “It’s also just misleading. It’s sugar we
need out of our food so let’s just concentrate
on that and make it obvious. We need to
remove this from the food industry’s discretion.
For the sugar labelling, I advocate for frontof
pack, mandatory labelling of all free sugars
in a packaged product. That would ideally be
in teaspoon pictures on the front, with a big
number (grams of free sugars) as well. Nothing
else will have any (positive) effect. People will
argue that it should just be added sugars, but
the body doesn’t discriminate between what is
in the food before processing and what is added
– it’s all sugar. The Health Star rating is already
dead in the water. The algorithm is flawed in
the combination of fat, salt and sugar. The food
industry brought this to us, we were suckered
in. Perversely, very high sugar foods can get 4+
health stars.”
Current food labels mean it is impossible for
consumers to distinguish between added and
natural sugars, or understand just how much
added sugar is in some core foods like yoghurts
and breakfast cereals, says National Institute for
Health Innovation Professor Cliona Ni Mhurchu.
“These changes to labels would improve transparency
and may incentivise food manufacturers
to reduce the added sugar content of their
products,” she says. “I also support advisory
(warning) labels for foods high in sugar, particularly
sugar-sweetened drinks. Research has
shown that advisory labels are one of the most
impactful labelling information formats. However,
sugar is not the only nutrient of concern in
the New Zealand diet, and options chosen need
to work with the Health Star Rating (HSR) which
rates foods on their overall nutrient content and
considers other nutrients of concern too. Food
labels are not, however, a silver bullet to better
diets. Better labelling will help New Zealanders
make more informed choices in support of
dietary guidelines, but government and industry
need to step up and play their part too.”
“Of the proposed options I support as a
priority:
• Added sugars quantified in the nutrition information
panel (NIP)
• Improvements to the way sugar is presented
in ingredients list, specifically grouping of
added sugars.
New Zealand’s health star ratings for packaged
products are already dead in the water and
flawed in their depiction of fat, salt and sugar.
That’s the opinion of public health expert Grant
Schofield, who says New Zealand’s food industry
“suckered” in the country’s public with the rating,
which has a flawed algorithm.
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