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Smart Choices - Assessing Menu Items

The Queensland Government’s Smart Choices- Healthy Food and Drink Supply Strategy for Queensland Schools is mandatory for all state schools and strongly encouraged for non-state schools.

Want to rate a product or menu item with specific nutritional information? You’ve come to the right place.

Rating tuckshop-made menu items

Making menu items from scratch can give you more control over ingredients, meaning fewer industrial-style additives, lower salt and sugar, and a higher content of fruit and vegetables.

For the healthiest recipes, always try to use lean meats, skin-free chicken, reduced fat dairy, and unsaturated fats and oils.

Most recipes made from scratch will be rated as GREEN, unless you are using unhealthy ingredients, such as pastry, butter, cream, or coconut milk/cream.

If you want to test your recipe against the Smart Choices nutrition criteria, FSANZ have a useful Nutrition Panel Calculator* which can generate a Nutrition Information Panel, allowing you to use our Smart Choices Calculator, below.

Smart Choices Calculator

Rating packaged products

If you have a product that you are unsure of, you can use the Smart Choices Calculator to rate the item. Note that you may need certain nutrition information, usually found on the Nutrition Information Panel on the back of the package. Also note that all packaged, processed products assessed using this calculator will be, at best, rated as AMBER. You can fast track your search by selecting the category of your item below, and follow the prompts.

Find out how to improve your menu rating

Click on the LEARN ABOUT RATINGS button in the relevant category below to find out how to increase the GREEN rated items on your menu by making simple changes. 

Hot Meal

Hot Meal

Cold Meal

Cold Meal

Drink

Drink

Snack

Snack

*Copyright

© Commonwealth of Australia and Food Standards Australia New Zealand, 2020

Provided you comply fully with the Terms of Use, FSANZ grants you a worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access, display and use the Nutrition Panel Calculator. You are free to display, download, print, reproduce, communicate and adapt material generated from the Nutrition Panel Calculator for your own personal or commercial use or use within your organisation.

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