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Healthy2gO FACT SHEET #3
BASIC NUTRITION
Low fat? Low carb? CSIRO diet? Cabbage
soup diet? Detox? There’s a lot of information about nutrition out there, and not all of
it is correct or properly researched. It’s easy to
get confused, but don’t despair! Just follow
simple nutrition advice from reputable sources, and be aware of what you’re eating every
day, and you can’t go wrong.
The word ‘diet’ itself can have negative
connotations and be misconstrued by many
people. Your diet really refers to the food
and drink you consume every day. Most of
the time, when people talk about a diet they
refer to a specific regimented eating pattern
that might be for weight loss or disease prevention. Changing your eating habits to become healthier shouldn’t be viewed as a diet
– think of it as a permanent lifestyle change
for the better!
Nutrition 101:
There is no one key ingredient to a healthy
life and healthy diet. Nor do you have to cut
out all those yummy foods to be considered
healthy. It’s all about balance and variety.
Dietary Guidelines for Australians have been
developed by the NHMRC to promote healthy
eating, in order to improve the population’s
health and wellbeing and lower the risk of
diet-related diseases.
The Guidelines are as follows:
 Eat a wide variety of nutritious foods
 Eat plenty of vegetables, legumes and fruits
 Eat plenty of cereals (including breads, rice,
pasta and noodles), preferably wholegrain
 Include lean meat, fish, poultry and/or
alternatives
 Include milks, yoghurts, cheeses and/or
alternatives. Reduced-fat varieties should be
chosen where possible
 Drink plenty of water
 Take care to:
 Limit saturated fat and moderate total fat intake
 Choose foods low in salt
 Limit your alcohol intake if you choose to drink
Consumer only moderate amounts of sugars
and foods containing added sugars
 Prevent weight gain: be physically active
and eat according to your energy needs
 Care for you food: prepare and store it safely
 Encourage and support breastfeeding
Be sure to keep the Guidelines in mind
when planning your daily food intake!
The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating (AGHE)
provides a great framework to help people have a
healthy diet using a variety of foods from five food
groups:
 Breads and cereals
(including rice, pasta and noodles)
 Vegetables and legumes
 Fruit
 Milk, yoghurt and cheese
 Meat, fish and poultry
(including eggs, nuts and legumes)
The AGHE also advises that extra foods (desserts,
soft drinks, takeaways, chocolate etc.) should only
be eaten sometimes and in small amounts.
The AGHE is more specific than the Dietary Guidelines for Australians, in that it provides a recommended number of serves of each food group
according to your particular age, gender, and life
stage (eg. pregnancy).
Unhealthy diets exposed:
You most likely would have seen a lot of diets in the
media. Quite often they are advertised as the diet
to make you ‘live forever’, the diet guaranteed to
‘achieve weight loss’, or the diet that some celebrity
followed to get a whole new body. You may have
heard of some of these:
✓ The Atkins diet
✓The Zone
✓ The cabbage soup diet
✓ The ‘eat right for your blood type’ diet
✓ The liver cleansing diet
While these diets generally incorporate some principles of healthy eating, they are restrictive and extreme versions of what a healthy diet should be. In
reality, these diets are difficult to sustain in the long
term and often leave the followers feeling hungry
and irritable.
Reading nutrition information panels:
We’ve all seen those tables on food packets, with
numbers and percentages related to what’s in the
product. But what does it actually mean? Hopefully
this will help you out:
Nutrition Information
Servings per package: 3
Serving size: 150g
Energy
Protein
Fat, total
- saturated
Carbohydrate,
total
- sugars
Sodium
Calcium
Quantity
per serving
Quantity
per 100g
608 kJ
4.2 g
7.4 g
4.5 g
18.6 g
18.6 g
90mg
300mg
(38%DI)
405 kJ
2.8 g
4.9 g
3.0 g
12.4 g
12.4 g
60 mg
200 mg
All nutrition panels list the number of servings of
food in a package, as well as the size of each serve.
The nutrition panel lists the amount of nutrients in
a serve of the food (eg. 150g), as well as per 100g
(to compare against other foods).
Nutrients required to be listed are
① Energy (provides energy to fuel your body, as kilojoules - kJ)
② Protein (for cell growth and repair)
③ Total and saturated fats (bad for you
in large amounts)
④ Total carbohydrates and sugars
⑤ Sodium (salt).
Some nutrition panels will also put on other
nutrients (eg. calcium, vitamin C).
A lot of nutrition panels now also have the
amount of nutrients as percentages of your daily
intake (%DI). This is based on recommendations
following an average daily adult diet of 8,700kJ,
and gives an idea of how much one serve of the
food will contribute to your overall daily intake.
It can also be used to judge how healthy the
food is (a food with a large %DI of fat is probably one you don’t want to eat!)
So know you know how to read an nutrition
panel. But how do you use the nutrition panel to
tell if the food is healthy or not?
Use this table as a general rule:
Nutrient
Amount
Total fat
< 10g/100g
Saturated fat
< 5g/100g
Sugar
< 15g/100g
Sodium
< 120mg/100g
What can you do?
Consult the AGHE to determine how many serves
of each food group you should be
having each day!
Take a look at some nutrition panels on your
favourite foods to see how healthy they are.
National Nutrition Week is happening,
from October 12th-18th.
Be sure to look out for any events
or promotions!
For more information:
Talk to an Accredited Practising Dietitian
(daa.asn.au) about healthy food choices
Australian Guide to Healthy Eating
health.gov.au/internet/wcms/publishing.nsf/content/healthpubhlth-strateg-food-guide-index.htm
Dietary Guidelines for Australians
nhmrc.gov.au/publications/synopses/dietsyn.htm
Understanding nutrition panels
health.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=93291
Nutrition Australia
nutritionaustralia.org