Draft Australian Dietary Guidelines (PDF, 3MB) - Eat For Health

The Food Modelling Report – translating nutrient requirements intodietary patternsThe report A modelling system to inform the revision of the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating (theFood Modelling Report) was commissioned by the NHMRC between 2008 and 2010. Itdetermined a range of combinations of amounts and types of foods that could be consumed tomeet nutritional needs with the least amount of energy for the smallest and least active peoplewithin an age and sex group. This report applies the Nutrient reference values for Australia and NewZealand including recommended dietary intakes [9] and provides information on the serve sizes andminimum number of daily serves required for each population group to achieve the requiredintake of vitamins, minerals and macronutrients.There were several inputs in the development of this report including consultation processesarranged by NHMRC and a public consultation of the draft report in April/May 2010 after whichthe models were finalised.The Food Modelling Report informed the revision of the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating (seeSection 1.7) and was considered together with other sources of evidence to determine therecommendations in the Guidelines.Capturing new evidenceNutrition is a continuously evolving area and research studies are published on a regular basis.Relevant results from high quality studies (primarily systematic reviews) assessing food, diet andhealth relationships published after the literature review for the Evidence Report (after 2009)were also considered in the development of the Guidelines. While results from these studies werenot graded, and did not influence the Evidence Statements, they were included in the Guidelinesand were deemed warranted to ensure currency.As the Evidence Report only included studies investigating food, diet and health relationships, theresults of other high quality studies published since 2002 were used to update the sections in theGuidelines which provided other information (‘Setting the scene’, ‘How eating a particular food mayimprove health outcomes’, and ‘Practical considerations for health professionals’ sections) if theymet the following criteria:• the study was a high quality randomised controlled trial, intervention, cohort, orobservational study, but not an editorial or opinion piece (meta-analyses wereconsidered)• the outcome of the study related to some aspect of health or chronic diseaseDRAFT Australian Dietary Guidelines- December 2011 16