Chapter 8 – Promoting Healthy
Eating
WHAT WE WILL BE COVERING
• Government role in promoting healthy eating
– Nutrition surveys
– Nutrient reference values
– Government agencies to promote healthy eating
• Australian Guide to Healthy Eating
• Dietary Guidelines
– Food standards legislation
• Non-Government role in promoting healthy eating
– Nutrition Australia
– Heart Foundation
Governments role
• We know that healthy eating is a major way to
improve our health and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
It also reduces costs associated with treating many
diseases.
• The Australian government addresses public health
nutrition through health promotion activities.
• They conduct surveys, provide standardised
recommendations for nutrients, fund awareness
programs and make laws for what people can say
about their food.
Nutrition Surveys
• Why? To monitor and assess what we are eating. Once we
know this, we can identify problems, fun appropriate
programs and develop public policy that addresses these
concerns.
• We can monitor changes in eating habits over time, to
measure the success of programs and modify.
• Example: Finding – children in all age groups exceed
recommended sodium intake.
• Solution?
– Mandatory declaration of sodium content
– Education/awareness about recommended levels
– Tax on junk food
Examples of Surveys
• National Children’s Nutrition and Physical
Activity Survey
• Food Consumption Survey
• National Nutrition Survey
National Children’s Nutrition and
Physical Activity survey?
– Specifically aimed at children. Why important?
– Addresses both exercise and food intake. Why?
– Age 5-16
– Participants recalled what they had eaten in the
last 24 hours.
– Participants wore pedometers to measure
incidental exercise. Why?
Food Consumption Survey
• Measures how much food is available.
• Measures consumption of different food groups.
• Works on the ‘apparent consumption’ – the amount
of food being produced and sold divided by the
amount of people.
• Look at the graphs on ppp220-221. what can you say
overall about the amount of food we have available
to eat?
National Nutrition Survey
• All age groups
• Detailed survey including physical
measurements, recall of food intake and
profile of eating habits.
• Compares what people are eating to RDI’s
• Data from this survey can highlight population
groups at risk to enable special programs
Nutrition Surveys Questions
• Use the information from the previous slides
and your text book (pp216-223) to complete
these questions;
1. Why do governments use nutrition surveys?
What are their potential benefits?
2. Identify and describe 3 nutrition surveys –
who are they aimed at, what do they aim to
do, what benefits have they provided?
3. What limitations are there for using nutrition
surveys?
Healthy Food Basket Survey
• The healthy food basket is a set selection of
healthy food that is typically available all over
Australia. It contains the nutritional and
energy requirements for a family of 6 for 2
weeks.
• The survey involves testing to see how much
this basket costs to purchase in different parts
of the country.
• The more it costs, the less likely you are to eat
healthily.
Nutrient Reference Values
• Detailed research into the requirements of the
human body.
• Reference to measure what we are putting
into our body against.
• NRV is the ‘amount of nutrients required on
an average daily basis for adequate physical
functioning and the prevention of disease.
4 Reference values
• EAR – Estimated average requirement
– Estimated to meet the needs of half the healthy
individuals in a particular demographic.
• RDI – recommended dietary intake
– Sufficient to meet the needs of nearly all
individuals in a demographic. As not everyone has
the same needs, this figure accounts for a wider
range of people
• AI – adequate intake
– Sometimes an RDI cannot be determines. When
this is the case, the average intake of this nutrient
is used.
• UL – upper limit
– Most nutrients are useful but cannot be
consumed in unlimited quantities. UL is the most
you can consume without increasing the risk of
health problems.
Beneficial?
• Health professionals can use as a guide when
prescribing treatments.
• Meal planning by individuals or organisations.
• Food labelling – people have informed
choices.
• Helps empower people. ______ model of
health.
Limitations
• They are recommendations for healthy
people. People already sick, elderly and
infants or people with special needs need
individual advice.
• Designed to be used by health professionals,
not individuals as they are very detailed and
require some knowledge of nutrition.
Complete activity 8.4
Government Programs
• Australian Guide to Healthy Eating
• Dietary Guidelines
• Use the following slides to complete your
“government agencies summary table”
Australian Guide to Healthy Eating
(AGHE)
• Funded by Commonwealth Department of Health
and Family Services and was first published in
1998.
• Aim is to help people understand the relationship
between nutrients and food, so they have the
necessary knowledge to choose a healthy diet.
• Provides general information that can be used by
population as a whole rather than specific
conditions.
• Divides foods into 5 main food groups and
provides 4 main recommendations;
– Eat from each food group each day;
– Choose a variety of foods from within each food group;
– Lots of plant based foods, moderate animal based foods, and
minimal human constructed foods.
– Drink lots of water.
• Do these sound general, and easy to
remember, or specific and complicated.
• What do you think the benefits and limitations
of this program are?
Benefits/Limitations
Benefits
– Applies to everybody
– Easy to remember the recommendations
– Contains information about quantities of each
food
– Visual – easy to digest
Limitations
– Not specific to individuals, age groups, ethinic
groups, activity levels etc.
Dietary Guidelines
• Guidelines have been developed by National
Health and Medical Research Council
(NHMRC) for the past two decades.
• Most recent guidelines published in 2003.
• Aims to promote benefits of healthy living and
eating. Distils into 4 guidelines that allow you
to be a healthy adult.
What are the Guidelines?
• Enjoy a wide range of nutritious foods
– Same ideas as AGHE.
• Be physically active and balance energy input
and output.
• Care for your food
– Food bourne illnesses are common.
• Encourage and support breast-feeding.
- Best nutritional start to life.
Benefits/Limitations
• Benefits
– More than just what to eat. Involves what to do
with our food as well as managing food intake and
output – more holistic.
– Much more detail than AGHE – explains why we
need to do certain things.
– Age appropriate
• Limitations
– Less accessible – harder/more effort to
understand
Food Standards Legislation
• The government is responsible for ensuring the
country has a safe food supply.
• There are rules for farming, manufacturing, recalling
food, monitoring imports and labelling.
• Ain Australia, we have a Food Standards Code, which
aims to;
– Protects public safety,
– Provides information to consumers
– Prevents misleading and deceptive conduct
Food standards code.
• To sell something as ‘food’, there is a
minimum standard of quality which must be
reached.
• Each type of food has a particular set of
standards which cover, microorganism levels,
nutritional content, and labelling
requirements.
Food labelling
• Any food product must contain a list of information.
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Name/description of the food
Name and address of manufacturer
Allergy warnings and advice
Ingredients list
Net weight
Nutritional info panel
Used by or best before date
Country of origin
Lot number
Percentage labelling
Food additives
Your turn!
• What do you think would happen if these laws
were not in place?
• What would the effects of this be?
• How do these laws promote healthy eating?
• Educates/empowers people – gives us control
• Eg.
– Kid has allergy. Parent only buys food with no
nuts.
– Person is counting calories – allows them to
monitor intake
Examples
• Kid has allergy. Parent only buys food with no
nuts.
• Person is counting calories – allows them to
monitor intake
• Person has iron deficiency – needs to eat
foods high in iron.
• Write down one way that you could use
food labelling to improve your own
health.
Nutrient and Health Claims
• To sell food, people need a reason to buy it. Often
food will be promoted as either tasty, cheap, healthy
or a combination of these.
• Your cereal may say ‘calcium is good for strong
bones’, which is true. This is a nutrient claim and is
allowed.
– Why would the cereal box say this?
– What do you think about the cereal without reading
anything else?
– What else should you read on the box?
– How can the government restrict claims like this?
Examples of nutrient claims
• Once you put a claim on your food, their are
nutritional requirements you need to reach.
• To say ‘low cholesterol’ you must have less than
20mg per 100g of food.
• Many food companies attempt to deceive us, which
is why these requirements are in place.
• ‘light’ can mean light in colour, not fat.
• Food is advertised as ‘fat free’ because it has lots of
sugar.
• Because nutrient are permitted they are difficult to
control.
Health claims
• Health claims tell us that if we eat the food,
we will have a decreased rick of certain
diseases.
• To say this – there must be clear, proven,
reliable evidence that this is true.
• As this is much more complicated, there is
only one health claim allowed – the benefit of
folate during pregnancay to protect against
defects.
TPS
• Discuss the Think Pair Share on p245 with the
person next to you?
Non-government Programs
• Non-government agencies are funded largely by
private donations. While governments are concerned
with everybody, non-government organisations are
funded by people with specific interests, so they
target specific causes
• Examples include – cancer council, Australian
Dieticians Association diabetes Australia, Nutrition
Australia, Heart Foundation
• What do you think each of these organisations tries
to do?
Nutrition Australia
• Founded in 1979 to promote educate about
nutrition using scientifically based
information.
• Offers services like funding for research,
seminars, consults with food industry, menu
assessments
• Developed the Healthy Living Pyramid.
Healthy Living Pyramid
Benefits
• Very easy to interpret and remember. Even if
you are too busy to try and manage individual
nutrients, everyone can remember three
groups of food and ‘eat most, moderately and
least’.
• Based on dietary guideline – simplifies it.
• Pictorial – foods can be swapped depending
on audience.
• Incorporates exercise.
Limitations
• No serving sizes – people can still eat too
much or not enough.
• Because it is simplified, it is difficult to place
some combination foods. A fruit tart could go
in eat most because of the fruit or in eat least
because of the fat and sugar.
Heart Foundation
• Aims to improve heart health and reduce disability and
death from heart disease.
• Promotes and conducts research for prevention and
treatment
• Promoting and influencing behaviour to improve heat
health. Also produce publications.
• Their message is;
–
–
–
–
Enjoy healthy eating
Be active
Don’t smoke
Go to the doctor
Tick Program
• The Heart Foundation tick of approval is
printed on foods that are low in nutrients that
promote heart disease and high in one that
reduce it.
• What could these be
– Low saturated fat, trans fat, energy, salt
– High fibre, calcium
• What effects do you think the
tick has had on food quality?
Benefits
• Easy to identify foods that are more healthy –
without having to specifically read nutrition info –
someone we trust has done the work for us!
• Often we have a selection of items in the same
category. The one with the tick usually represents a
healthier choice.
• It is now a well known institution. People care about
their health and will purchase the tick product.
Manufacturers are changing their products to
conform to the standards so they can print the tick,
which makes them healthier for us.