About Health Star Ratings

This article provides an overview of what Health Star Ratings are, and how they are calculated. This article is also available as a video tutorial, click to play below. 

Video Tutorial

The Health Star Rating (HSR) is a voluntary front-of-pack labelling system that rates the overall nutritional profile of a packaged food and assigns it a rating from ½ a star to 5 stars. As a useful rule of thumb, if the food product carries a Nutrition Information Panel (NIP), the use of the HSR system should be considered. 

Health Star Ratings are based on a point system that awards a star rating based on the quantity of specific food components within the product. The rating of your product depends on:

• Baseline points: The following nutrients/components are used to establish the baseline points: energy, saturated fat, total sugars and sodium.
• Modifying points: The following nutrients/components are used to calculate the modifying points:
  • FVNL (fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes) (V points)
  • Concentrated FV (concentrated fruit and vegetables) (V points)
  • Protein (P points)
  • Fibre (F points)
• Final points: The final points are baseline points minus modifying points.
• HSR Category: The final star rating is calculated using the final points and the category of the food product. Most foods (if non-dairy, not a beverage, and not an oil or spread) are category 2.

Foodworks calculates the HSR from the products’ ingredients, and provides appropriate HSR graphics for their labels.