Choice has launched a campaign to stop food companies using canteen guidelines to market their products.
Self-made school canteen certification logos on food and beverage packaging are misleading parents, according to the consumer advocacy organisation.
Products such as Paddle Pops, Tiny Teddies and Shapes are displaying “school canteen approved” logos that mislead parents into believing these products are good options for lunch boxes, according to Choice.
Moreover, these logos predominantly appear on processed snacks with little or no nutritional value. Some, like Arnott's 100s & 1000s Tiny Teddies, Monster Noodle Snacks and Parker's Pretzel Snacks, only get a health star rating of two or less, Choice says.
Yet its research shows that 43 per cent of parents believed that products with these logos are healthier than similar products without logos, and 42 per cent would be more likely to choose a product with one of these logos than a similar product without the logo.
“School canteen approved logos are essentially acting as health halos for processed, packaged foods. With one in four children in Australia overweight or obese, we need labels that make it easier to make healthier decisions,” says Choice spokesperson Tom Godfrey.
“School canteen guidelines exist to inform canteen managers on how to prepare their menus. Now we have food in supermarkets promoting an ‘amber rating’, which in a canteen setting means they should be ‘selected carefully’. Without the context of the guidelines, these claims are pushing unhealthy options.”
17 different industry-made certifications manipulate these guidelines to promote nutrient-poor and processed foods, according to Choice. These labels aren’t accredited or approved by an independent body, but are created by the food companies themselves.
Nutritionist and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Health Sciences at University of Sydney, Dr Kieron Rooney, has also criticised the use of these self-made certifications to market products.
“It is inappropriate for food manufacturers to take a government policy that was put in place to supposedly protect children's health and manipulate it an attempt to health wash their discretionary food product," Dr Rooney says.
