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What are the dietary guidelines and why should I follow them?

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What are the dietary guidelines and why should I follow them?

The Australian Dietary Guidelines are intended to advise the general population on key messages to guide every day food choices to promote good health, wellbeing, and prevent dietary-related conditions and chronic disease. The recommendations are based on extensive scientific evidence, developed after looking at high quality research.

The 5 guidelines are:

To achieve and maintain a healthy weight, be physically active and choose amounts of nutritious foods and drinks to meet your energy needs.
Enjoy a wide variety of nutritious food groups from the five food groups every day.
Limit your intake of foods containing saturated fat, added salt, added sugars and alcohol.
Encourage, support and promote breastfeeding.
Care for your food; prepare and store it safely.

The guidelines exist to promote healthy, balanced diets and prevent lifestyle diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. The guidelines also inform the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating (AGHE) which tell us how much of each food group we need each day. Check out the guidelines and AGHE here.

Your Personal Healthy Eating Quiz

What you eat or don’t eat affects how you look, feel and perform. Take our short quiz to find out what foods you could introduce to help you be your best.

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What is healthy eating?

Eating healthy is making sure you enjoy a wide variety of foods from each of the five major food groups daily, in the amounts recommended. The five major food groups as recommended by the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating are:

vegetables and legumes/bean
fruit
lean meats and poultry, fish, eggs, tofu, nuts and seeds, legumes/beans
grain (cereal) foods, mostly wholegrain and/or high cereal fibre varieties
milk, yoghurt, cheese and/or alternatives, mostly reduced fat.

Foods are grouped together because they provide similar amounts of key nutrients and eating a variety of foods from the list above helps to promote good health and reduce the risk of disease.

How do I improve my diet?

If you want to improve your diet you have come to the right place. By completing the Healthy Eating Quiz you’ll receive instant personalised feedback and a report on your diet quality to highlight any areas where you can improve your overall eating habits. Your score is based on the frequency and variety of the foods consumed from the five major food groups mentioned above. No Money No Time can help you improve your score by providing tips, goals and suggestions. On top of this we will provide quick, cheap and healthy recipes as well as credible answers to diet hacks, myths and FAQ’s.

Is my diet healthy?

Dietary habits are different between people. Some people choose to follow a particular diet (i.e., Keto diet or vegan diet) while some have to make changes due to certain food restrictions or health conditions. If you want to know if what you usually eat is healthy, then do the Healthy Eating Quiz today to give you the answers in less than 10 minutes.

Why is healthy eating important?

Your HEQ score and personalised feedback report is based on the frequency and variety of healthy core foods you usually eat. This is important because no single food contains all the nutrients we need to stay healthy. Some foods are higher in nutrients than others and people who have a lot of variety in the foods they eat are more likely to be healthy and to stay healthy. In other words, if you can eat a large variety of vegetables as opposed to only 2-3 types of vegetables, the benefits are much greater. This type of diet also helps you to feel better, think better and perform better during your usual daily activities.

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The University of Newcastle Australia