SYDNEY, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Australian researchers, in an effort to push the nation's supermarkets to stock fewer fattening products, have released a report calling for greater transparency in the health ratings on food labels.
The report, published on Thursday by the Sydney-based George Institute for Global Health, examined the health ratings of more than 18,000 products in four of the nation's largest supermarket chains.
Public health lawyer Dr. Alexandra Jones from the institute said disappointingly, little progress had been made in the healthiness of foods over the last two years.
"Our data suggest government-led voluntary initiatives encouraging manufacturers to make healthier packaged foods are having little effect," said Jones.
While Australia has a health rating system, or Health Star Rating (HSR), its adoption has not been made mandatory, as a result the report found that only 43 percent of the goods assessed displayed a rating.
"Consumers need accessible and easy to understand information to help them make healthier food choices," Jones said.
Products from top manufacturers that displayed a health star rating, had a mean rating of just 2.8 out of five stars. Under half were considered "healthy" and over two thirds were considered "ultra-processed".
Jones said Australia's "spiralling rates of obesity" could be in part traced to this prevalence of unhealthy foods in supermarkets.
"The widespread manufacture, marketing and consumption of unhealthy processed and pre-prepared foods and beverages is a major contributor to Australians' excess consumption of energy, harmful saturated and trans fats, added sugars and salt," the report read.
According to the most recent data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) in 2018 an estimated one in four children, and two in three adults were overweight or obese, which often lead to life threatening conditions like heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
The George Institute's report noted that Australia's obesity epidemic, if left unchecked, could lead to an estimated 1.75 million deaths in people over 20 by 2050.
The researchers called for the mandating of the HSR system for all products, evidencing its feasibility in the mandating of Country of Origin Labelling (CoOL) from July 2018.
"The high uptake of CoOL by some Australian manufacturers shows that industry can and will provide important information to consumers through product labelling when they have to."
"It's time we saw greater government leadership to improve the healthiness of our food supply." Enditem
