What is the Health Star Rating?
The Health Star Rating system is a voluntary front-of-pack labelling system for packaged food. How many stars a food gets depends on the overall nutritional profile of the product. Food is assigned a rating from half a star to 5 stars. Health Star Ratings provide a quick, easy, standard way for consumers to compare similar packaged foods.
When developing Health Star Ratings, the New Zealand and Australian governments worked with public health experts, the food industry, and consumer groups.
What are the stars based on?
The Health Star Rating label reflects the overall nutrition content of packaged foods. The rating is based on:
- risk nutrients (saturated fat, sodium, energy, and total sugars)
- healthy ingredients such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes, and
- dietary fibre and protein content in some cases.
Each rating is calculated on a consistent measure of either per 100 grams or 100 millilitres of your product.
Foods get more stars if they are:
- lower in energy, saturated fat, sugar, or sodium (salt)
- higher in healthy nutrients and ingredients (fibre, protein, fruits, vegetables, nuts, or legumes).
Why use the Health Star Rating system?
Putting a Health Star Rating on your product prioritises the health of your consumers and offers them an additional tool to use when shopping. Health Star Ratings are an attractive feature for many shoppers when they are deciding which product to buy. Most consumers are already using the Health Star Rating system to help them choose between packaged foods.
Research from New Zealand Food Safety’s 2024 Consumer Insights Survey shows:
- when buying a food for the first time, 83% of shoppers use health stars at least some of the time. Of those, 61% use it at least half of the time, and 44% use it most of the time
- 80% of respondents trust the Health Star Rating system.
Uptake targets
For the Health Star Rating to be most effective, it needs to be on most packaged foods. Following an independent review of the Health Star Rating system in 2019, uptake targets for the system were set.
- Interim target 1: 50% of intended products by 14 November 2023
- Interim target 2: 60% of intended products by 14 November 2024
- Final target: 70% of intended products by 14 November 2025.
If uptake does not meet the final target, ministers will consider mandating the system.
Uptake in New Zealand growing but below target
The number of New Zealand companies using the Health Star Rating system continues to rise. However, 2023 monitoring found only 30% of packaged foods intended to use the system in New Zealand were doing so.
The Health Star Rating system is free for businesses to use, and New Zealand Food Safety offers free advice to companies who would like to add the label to their product.
Uptake of the Health Star Rating system as at November 2023
Consumer Food Safety Insights Survey: Perceptions, knowledge & behaviours [PDF, 4.6 MB]
Consumer awareness and use report – Health Promotion Agency
Find out more about how Health Star Ratings work
How to put the Health Star Rating on your product
The Health Star Rating is an important label, which most New Zealanders use when shopping for kai.
A comprehensive guide is on the Australian government website.
Calculator and style guide – Health Star Rating (Australia)
Additional resource
Eating and activity guidelines – Ministry of Health
