Improving the performance of the Health Star Rating front-of-pack nutrition labelling system by incorporating added sugar

The Health Star Rating (HSR) is an interpretive front-of-pack nutrition labelling system that rates the overall nutritional profile of packaged food and assigns a rating from 0.5 to 5 stars in half star increments. The HSR algorithm uses total sugar content as one of the components. This has been cr...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Peters, S, Dunford, E, Jones, A, Ni Mhurchu, C, Taylor, F, Woodward, M, Neal, B
Format: Conference item
Published: Karger Publishers 2017
Description
Summary:The Health Star Rating (HSR) is an interpretive front-of-pack nutrition labelling system that rates the overall nutritional profile of packaged food and assigns a rating from 0.5 to 5 stars in half star increments. The HSR algorithm uses total sugar content as one of the components. This has been criticised because intrinsic sugars naturally present in dairy, fruits, and vegetables are treated the same as sugars added during food processing. We assessed whether the HSR could better discriminate between core and discretionary foods by including added sugar in the algorithm.