Heart Foundation tick crossed off packaging

The Heart Foundation has announced plans to retire its red and white tick as the Health Star Rating System takes over food packaging.

The logo has been used for more than 25 years to help consumers decide which foods are healthiest for them.

Both the tick and the Health Star Rating system are food labelling systems that rate the nutritional quality of packaged foods.

“Now that the star system is becoming sufficiently well established and understood by shoppers... we feel we can now safely begin to retire the tick," said Mary Barry, the Heart Foundation's national CEO.

Over the years there was criticism of the tick as food manufacturers had to pay a fee for it to appear on their packaging.

However, many have praised the tick as it started conversations about nutrition, and attention was brought to food labelling.

The Heart Foundation claims the tick helped reduce unhealthy trans fat levels, especially in yellow spreads, and improved the quality of many processed foods in Australia.

For example, in 2013, approximately 16 tonnes of salt was removed from the food supply from the reformulation of pasta sauce alone.