New study reveals which supermarket sells the HEALTHIEST food
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New study reveals which supermarket sells the HEALTHIEST food
If you're looking to get your hands on instant food that is healthy, then Woolworths should be your go-to supermarket, according to a new study.
Woolworths topped the list of retailers that sell the healthiest packaged food. Credit: NCA NewsWire/Nikki Short.
The George Institute for Global Health has recently published the FoodSwitch: The State of the Food Supply report, revealing that Woolworths' own branded food is much healthier compared to other supermarket chains.
The reports analysed over 18,000 Aussie food items, assessing them on the basis of Australia's Dietary Guidelines' Health Star Ratings — examining their nutrient composition and whether they are heavily processed.
The results indicated that Woolworth's own branded food was the healthiest, followed by Coles, Aldi, and IGA.
Also topping the list of healthiest brands were Sanitarium and A2 Milk.
Meanwhile, beverage and junk food manufacturers were unsurprisingly at the bottom.
The George Institute public health lawyer and senior research fellow Dr Alexandra Jones told news.com.au: “Down the bottom of the list you see companies like Mondelez who make mostly confectionery, so it’s not surprising.”
“But you can see how many products they make and just how unhealthy they actually are, they had an average health star rating of 1.1 (stars) overall.”
Woolworths was praised by the researcher for having 83 per cent of its own branded products carry a Health Star Rating, in comparison to Australian food and beverage manufacturers which only had 43 per cent of their products displaying the Health Star Rating.
“That’s what you tend to get when you have a voluntary policy, companies are using it where they get a good health star rating but they’re not putting it on products that don’t score well,” Dr Jones remarked.
The researcher also revealed that this year's report has seen "some reduction in sugar" in packaged foods.
However, Dr Jones noted that salt content in packaged foods was still worryingly high.
She said: “What’s disappointing is we have a government policy called the Healthy Food Partnership that’s had targets for reducing salt in the food supply now for over five years.”
“There’s very little change and that’s because the policy is voluntary and companies are just not doing much, there’s not a lot of incentive.”
“It is so clearly linked to high blood pressure and that’s linked to heart disease.”
“So reductions in salt are really essential to improve a lot of people’s lives in Australia but there is very little change happening in the food supply.”
Dr Alexandra Jones said that although manufacturers are starting to reduce sugar in their packaged food products, sodium content is still worryingly high in them. Credit: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg via Getty Images.
Meanwhile, Coles topped the list for having the most Australian made products for sale on their shelves.
The results claimed that 68 per cent of the products from Coles were eligible to display the kangaroo logo, followed by Woolies at 61 per cent, IGA at 58 per cent and Aldi at 49 per cent.
The study crowned Coles as the retailer that sells the most Aussie food products. Credit: NCA NewsWire / Sarah Marshall.
It should be noted that Country of Origin Labelling (CoOL) first became mandatory for most foods in July 2018.
“I think the world is moving towards policies that promote healthy and sustainable diets,” Dr Jones said, noting that more and more people are getting interested in consuming locally-sourced food.
“What’s interesting is increasing interest from people on the environmental impact of their foods, and I think that’s really promising."
“Country of origin wasn’t brought in to support that goal originally, it was brought in around food safety … in the future, more and more people want to know about aspects of their food to do which includes as only one of the factors how far the food has travelled.”
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