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.