Chart of the day: How much of the food in a supermarket is healthy?

Updated

When you walk down the aisles of a supermarket, how many of the thousands of foods you see would you expect to be healthy to eat?

To answer that question, researchers from the George Institute for Global Health recently investigated a total of 40,664 packaged products that are common on Australian shelves.

They found only 38 per cent of those products have a Health Star Rating of 3.5 or more — a score they say indicates "a basic level of healthfulness".

Packaged foods dominate what Australians put in their supermarket trolleys, accounting for 59 per cent of food and beverage products sold from food service and retail stores.

"Our supermarket shelves are full of products that are making us fat and making us sick," lead researcher Michelle Crino said.

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Topics: food-and-cooking, diet-and-nutrition, human-interest, health, australia

First posted