Consumers are making, and are being encouraged to make healthier choices.

There's nothing wrong with that, of course. Healthier people mean there's less time we have to spend in the GP's consulting room, or worse, a hospital.

Plenty of folks say that the government should get out of our daily lives, but encouraging people to eat healthier really it's what you could call over-reach.

The latest efforts are health star ratings on the packets of just about every food product sold in the country.

There's nothing wrong with providing accurate information for people to make decisions - we do the same thing with country of origin labeling, because we want to support local growers and manufacturers.

But clearly, in the recent decision where freshly squeezed orange juice with no added sugar is rated the same as diet coke seems pretty rough.

Health star ratings give everyone an easy guide to what's good for you. It won't take a genius to work out that the ratings on OJ and diet soft drink are the same though.

It'll take even less time for consumers to work out that maybe the health star ratings aren't what they're claimed to be and perhaps you can just go and drink that diet soft drink instead of a fresh MIA-grown orange juice.

A classic case of how good intentions have gone wrong.

Declan Rurenga, editor

drurenga@areanews.com.au