The Heart Foundation’s Tick deals with reality

Response to Rosemary Stanton ("When a healthy Tick shouldn't be a Tick", On Line Opinion, February 22, 2008).

Some people think the sole solution to healthy eating is to keep telling us to buy fresh foods. Yes, it is an important message but messages alone don't change behaviour and reality cannot be ignored.

Reality for most of us is about trying to do the right thing, but sometimes busy lives necessitate shortcuts. So there are times when we opt for a ready meal instead of preparing steak and salad, or we grab a pizza after a long day at work.

That's why you'll find the Tick on a range of foods that Australians eat - from lean meat to meat pies and breakfast cereals to cereal bars.

But claiming the Tick should not be providing healthier options across the range of food products ignores the reality for most Australians.

The Heart Foundation has spent several years studying where, when and what Australians eat and identifying how best we can help.

Australians eat 2.7 million meals at large fast food restaurants every day and one in every $3 we spend on food is on meals prepared outside our homes. For the Heart Foundation to make a real difference we must push for nutritional improvements in outlets where Australians eat often.

McDonald's serves 1.2 million people a day, takeaway pizza chains sell 190 million pizzas a year and almost 90 per cent of Australians told us they wanted Tick-approved options at burger chains, pizza chains, chicken chains and sandwich bars.

After one year, healthier meals are now available to more than eight and half million Australian customers every week at Qantas, McDonald's, Crust Gourmet Pizza Bars, Delaware North (who supply Melbourne's Rod Laver Arena) and Sodexho (for their workplace canteens).

Already, tonnes of saturated fat, trans fat and salt have been removed from the Australian food supply and tons of fibre and vegetables have been added.

The Tick delivers real nutritional benefits and significantly healthier foods:

• Australians were among the first in the world to be able to access a huge range of margarines with less than 1 per cent trans fat (half the level permitted by Denmark), thanks to Tick's standards;
• a Tick pizza at Crust has one third of the salt and saturated fat of the leading national chains; and
• McDonald's Deli Choice bread rolls have 40 per cent less sodium than they used to, removing 12.9 tonnes of sodium from our food supply in just six months. Half these rolls (whether Tick approved or not) are now ordered on multigrain which has twice the fibre of their white rolls - a new choice offered as a result of Tick's standards.

Here are some other facts about Tick that Ms Stanton got wrong:

Tick foods do not cost more. Shopping basket tests of 20 of the most commonly bought items (for example, bread, milk, margarine, baked beans) choosing Tick and non-Tick items with as similar nutritional profiles as possible, revealed the total cost of the Tick basket was in fact $0.19 cheaper.

About one third of the foods with the Tick are fresh foods. The Heart Foundation continually promotes fresh foods, healthy eating and provides online recipes and cook books promoting healthier eating. It also provides clear advice on eating “occasional foods” - no more than once a week. Tick standards for occasional foods are the toughest of all - there's currently only one biscuit brand with the Tick.

Having a “one size fits all” criteria is meaningless. That's why our national food standards organisation (FSANZ) is adopting a multiple nutrient criteria approach for health claims. Different foods have different nutrition priorities. For example, yoghurt needs to be a good source of calcium, have less saturated fat and kilojoules, but vegetable oil needs to have a healthier ratio of healthy to unhealthy fats whereas kilojoules and calcium just aren't relevant.

Like any program, the Tick needs funds to exist. We pass on the costs the Heart Foundation incurs to those companies who've met all of our nutrition standards. We believe that the food companies who produce the foods should foot the bill for their improvement. Every cent that comes into Tick goes back into making healthier foods.

Sideline critics claim Tick is driving more people to McDonald's. We hope that we are driving consumers to spend their take away dollars in McDonald's instead of the other chains who have yet to assume some level of responsibility for the nutrition of their foods. We do not believe that someone who eats sushi or a tuna salad sandwich is suddenly going to venture to McDonald's because of the Tick and then order the Big Mac, fries and coke.

We are proud of the action we are taking to shake up the eating out industry. Sure, it would have been easier to join the sideline critics, but where does that leave the millions of Australians who eat out?

It's time to put food snobbery aside and get real.

The Heart Foundation Tick has proven that companies can and will make healthier choices. So instead of taking aim at those who are taking action and providing healthier choices, let's turn up the heat on food outlets and companies that have made no effort to improve their offerings or, even worse, promote meals of questionable nutritional value as "healthy".