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Eating our way to missed health targets: CSIRO
New research shows Australians are on a nutritional nosedive that threatens to thwart the nation’s 2030 health targets.
Australians are predicted to eat their way out of contention to meet national health targets by 2030.
A new CSIRO study predicts Australia will fall well short of 2030 health targets without ‘significant intervention’ to halt a predicted 18% surge in the consumption of discretionary foods over the next five years.
In what it has called a ‘concerning trend’, the agency also predicted an almost 10% decline in fruit intake, and a stagnation of vegetable consumption that already sits well below the recommended guidelines.
The study, published on Wednesday in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, also has bad news for Australians aged over 71, with that cohort showing the greatest projected decline in fruit consumption, 14.7%, by 2030.
The only age group to buck the disturbing dietary trend is young adults aged 18 to 30, who showed a slight predicted increase in fruit and vegetables, 0.14 servings, by 2030.
In 2021, the Australian Government’s National Preventive Health Strategy (2021–30) set daily nutritional targets for Australians of:
- two serves of fruit
- five serves of vegetables
- a reduction of discretionary foods to less than 20% of total intake.
Improving access to, and consumption of, healthy diets is one of the strategy's seven key focus areas, with good nutrition critical in helping to prevent chronic disease and supporting long-term public health.
The RACGP also backs a preventive approach, with its Red Book,
Guidelines for preventive activities in general practice, saying diet is ‘the most important behavioural risk factor that can significantly impact health’.
In its advice to GPs, it says improving nutrition has the potential to improve individual and public health while reducing healthcare costs, and that optimal nutrition is vital for the ‘normal growth and physical and cognitive development of infants and children’.
To see how Australians were tracking with the targets, CSIRO researchers used predictive modelling techniques to analyse nine years of data from more than 275,000 Australians, gathered between 2015 and 2023.
Senior CSIRO Research Scientist, Dr Gilly Hendrie, said predictive modelling – a rapidly developing area in public health, used widely during the COVID-19 pandemic – enabled researchers to forecast future dietary trends and compare them to national targets, providing ‘a powerful early warning system’.
‘The gap between our current dietary trajectory and our national health targets is widening,’ she said.
‘Rather than waiting to see the impact of poor dietary habits, we can now identify concerning trends and intervene before they become major public health issues.’
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