How healthy are Australian lunch box snacks with child-directed marketing?

Issue Addressed: The diets of Australian children, including their lunch boxes have a disproportionate amount of discretionary foods. Packaged snacks have marketing directed to both children and parents. Methods: Packaged school lunch box snacks were identified on supermarket web-sites. Nutrition information and child-directed and parent-directed marketing on the package were analysed. The "healthiness" of products was analysed using the Health Star Rating (HSR) (presently on packaging in Australia), two criteria designed for assessing food suitable for marketing to children (the Australian Health Council and the World Health Organization Western Pacific region) and Chilean criteria (used for broad food regulation). Results: The average HSR of the 135 products was 2.2% and 79% had a HSR