Trends (2014-2018) in the healthiness of packaged food purchases of Australian consumers before and after the introduction of voluntary Health Star Rating nutrition labels

ABSTRACT OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the trends in the healthiness of packaged food purchases of Australian consumers before and after the introduction of the Health Star Rating (HSR) nutrition labels. DESIGN: Panel data analysis and difference-in-differences analysis. SETTING: The Australian Government endorsed HSR nutrition labels for voluntary implementation on packaged foods in June 2014. We analyse the packaged food purchases of households across all major supermarkets before (January 2014 to June 2014) and after (June 2014 – Dec 2018) the introduction of HSR. PARTICIPANTS: 6284 members of a panel of households across Australia reporting their grocery purchases to a market research company (Nielsen Homescan Panel). RESULTS: The healthiness of household food purchases exhibited a U-shaped trend – decreasing from 2014 to 2017, and then increasing from 2018, corresponding to the time when a higher proportion of products were HSR-labelled. Households that purchased a higher proportion of HSR-labelled products had healthier household purchases overall. Further, the healthiness of households’ category-specific food purchases was positively associated with the proportion of HSR labelled products in categories where HSR was adopted, relative to control categories where HSR was not adopted. CONCLUSIONS: In Australia, once a substantial number of packaged food products adopted the voluntary HSR summary indicator, we observed an increasing trend in the healthiness of household food purchases. Widespread adoption of a nutrition summary indicator, such as HSR, on packaged food is likely to be beneficial for population health.