DRAFT Australian Dietary Guidelines - Eat For Health

Potential mechanisms through which particular dietary patterns may influence health were
considered to help assess the plausibility of the associations described in the Evidence sections.
This information is included for each Guideline under the heading ‘How a particular food/dietary
pattern may improve health outcomes’.
This information has originated predominantly from previous dietary guidelines series, updated by
narrative reviews of additional literature sourced from authoritative reports, from the Food
Modelling Report, from the NRV document [9] and from high quality studies published since the
last Dietary Guidelines in 2003.
1.5 Adherence to dietary advice in Australia
Adherence to dietary recommendations in Australia is poor [43]. Most children’s intake of
vegetables, fruit, grain (cereal) foods and milk, yoghurt and cheese products and alternatives is
below recommended levels, while their intake of saturated fat and sugar exceed recommendations
[13]. Analysis of Australia’s 1995 National Nutrition Survey [44] found that energy-dense, nutrientpoor
‘extra foods’ [45] contributed 41% of the total daily energy intake of 2–18 year olds [46].
The most recent dietary data available for Australian adults (collected in the 1995 National
Nutrition Survey) also showed a poor dietary pattern with inadequate intakes of vegetables, fruit,
wholegrain cereals and milk, yoghurt and cheese products and alternatives, with higher than
recommended proportions of fat intake derived from saturated fat [44, 47]. More than 35% of
daily energy intake was derived from energy-dense nutrient-poor ‘extra foods’ [46].
There have been changes in the intakes of macro-nutrients over the past three decades, generally
in the direction encouraged by previous dietary guidelines (see Table 1.1) [48].
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