Research
Mixed
Core food groups such as bread, breakfast cereals, cheese, canned baked beans, and yoghurt have significant potential for reformulation to meet Heart Foundation targets, yet many dominant companies fail to meet these sodium and sugar targets.
Major food companies have the ability to reduce sodium and sugar in staple foods like bread and yogurt, but many are not doing so. Government-mandated reformulation targets for these core categories are necessary to improve population health.
GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
Efforts to improve the healthiness of products should be directed to the 22 food companies dominating this market share, particularly in the core foods groups which are currently less likely to meet Heart Foundation reformulation targets (bread, breakfast cereals, cheese, canned baked beans, yoghurt).
Why this rating
Data-driven assessment of reformulation potential across multiple sub-categories.
Source
Which companies dominate the packaged food supply of New Zealand and how healthy are their products?
Sally Mackay et al. · PLoS ONE · 2021
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0245225
cross_sectional · n=13506Cited 13×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
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- Products that voluntarily display the Health Star Rating (HSR) label on the front of pack have significantly higher health scores (mean 3.2) compared to those that do not display the label (mean 2.5).Good
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