`Australia and New Zealand Producers Warn Health Star Ratings Could Undercut Olive Oil Messaging - Olive Oil Times
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Australia and New Zealand Producers Warn Health Star Ratings Could Undercut Olive Oil Messaging

By Paolo DeAndreis
Feb. 23, 2026 16:33 UTC
Summary Summary

Producers in Australia and New Zealand are con­cerned that the Health Star Rating sys­tem may over­shadow the health ben­e­fits of extra vir­gin olive oil, prompt­ing calls for the sys­tem to become manda­tory on all food pack­ages to increase con­sumer trust and effec­tive­ness. The sys­tem cur­rently focuses on penal­iz­ing sat­u­rated fat con­tent, lead­ing to lower rat­ings for extra vir­gin olive oil despite its proven health ben­e­fits and asso­ci­a­tion with healthy dietary pat­terns such as the Mediterranean diet.

Olive pro­duc­ers in Australia and New Zealand are ques­tion­ing whether the Health Star Rating (HSR) sys­tem could soon over­shadow years of con­sumer edu­ca­tion about the dis­tinct healthy qual­i­ties of extra vir­gin olive oil.

HSR, the cur­rent vol­un­tary front-of-pack food label­ing sys­tem, is set to become manda­tory on all food pack­ages sold in both coun­tries.

In a com­mu­niqué issued after a food min­is­ters meet­ing on February 13, min­is­ters from both coun­tries con­firmed that the vol­un­tary label­ing appeared on only 39 per­cent of food pack­ages sold in Australia and 36 per­cent of those sold in New Zealand. The fig­ures were well below the 70 per­cent tar­get min­is­ters had hoped to reach by November 2025.

“Ministers expressed con­cern that the low uptake has lim­ited the system’s effec­tive­ness and under­mined con­sumer trust,” an offi­cial note stated. Calls to make HSR manda­tory have come from groups in both coun­tries, includ­ing the Australian Medical Association, the Public Health Association of Australia and the New Zealand Food and Grocery Council.

Ministers asked Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) to develop a pro­posal to incor­po­rate HSR as a manda­tory mea­sure in the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code. Two rounds of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion are planned before any deci­sion becomes offi­cial.

The Health Star Rating frame­work was intro­duced in 2014 as a vol­un­tary front-of-pack scheme designed to help shop­pers com­pare the nutri­tional value of pack­aged foods at a glance.

According to offi­cial descrip­tions, it pro­vides a sim­ple visual guide for com­par­ing sim­i­lar pack­aged prod­ucts, with more stars indi­cat­ing a more favor­able nutri­tional pro­file. Ministers acknowl­edged that con­sumers often mis­un­der­stand how to use the sys­tem, ​“par­tic­u­larly that the HSR is only intended for com­par­ing sim­i­lar prod­ucts.”

For olive oil pro­duc­ers, the con­cern cen­ters on how the algo­rithm eval­u­ates edi­ble fats and how those scores will appear under manda­tory olive oil label­ing rules.

HSR scores for edi­ble fats high­light how heav­ily the cal­cu­la­tor penal­izes sat­u­rated fat. Because some sat­u­rated fats are present in extra vir­gin olive oil, its rat­ing typ­i­cally sits around 3.5 stars. That is higher than but­ter, palm oil and lard, which are usu­ally rated at about 2.0 stars, but lower than canola or sun­flower oils, which can score up to 4.5 stars because of their lower sat­u­rated fat con­tent.

Producers argue the sys­tem does not account for the role of monoun­sat­u­rated fats or for com­pounds such as polyphe­nols, sterols and toco­pherols.

They also point to decades of research link­ing reg­u­lar con­sump­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil to car­dio­vas­cu­lar and meta­bolic ben­e­fits. Extra vir­gin olive oil is widely asso­ci­ated with dietary pat­terns such as the Mediterranean diet and is being stud­ied for poten­tial roles in cog­ni­tive and vas­cu­lar health, as well as pos­si­ble asso­ci­a­tions with reduced risk of cer­tain can­cers.

“We’ve been say­ing it since 2014: this rat­ing sys­tem short-changes extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­ers and is mis­lead­ing for con­sumers want­ing to make health­ier choices,” Australian Olive Association CEO Michael Southan said in a note released by the orga­ni­za­tion.

“The rat­ings cal­cu­la­tor focuses on sat­u­rated fat con­tent and does not take into account the much broader health ben­e­fits. Olives are a proven super­food, help­ing to boost health and pre­vent dis­ease and we pro­duce some of the very best in the world right here in Australia,” Southan added.

Sarah Haworth of the Olive Wellness Institute recently com­mented that extra vir­gin olive oil ​“is widely con­sid­ered to be the health­i­est cook­ing oil,” but that front-of-pack sys­tems often rely on ​“crude mea­sure­ments” that pri­or­i­tize sat­u­rated fat over fac­tors such as pro­cess­ing, fatty acid pro­file and bioac­tive com­pound con­tent.

Elsewhere, extra vir­gin olive oil is increas­ingly framed as a pub­lic health food. In the United States, the lat­est review of dietary guide­lines high­lighted olive oil and table olives as part of healthy eat­ing pat­terns. Since 2011, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has autho­rized a health claim that olive oil polyphe­nols con­tribute to the pro­tec­tion of blood lipids from oxida­tive stress. Major pro­duc­ing coun­tries, includ­ing Spain, Portugal, and Italy, also rec­om­mend daily con­sump­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil in pub­lic health mes­sag­ing.

“In its cur­rent state, manda­tory health star rat­ing infor­ma­tion for extra vir­gin olive oil will be a blow to our indus­try,” Southan warned.

“At a time when Australians are eat­ing more processed food than ever, our indus­try pro­vides an oil that is com­pletely unre­fined and nutri­ent-dense, gen­tly squeezed from the flesh of an olive in its nat­ural form,” he said. ​“It needs to be rec­og­nized that way.”

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