What Are the Ten Dietary Guidelines for Australians?

Healthy eating and the general health of the population are concerns for many governments around the world. The National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia prescribes 10 dietary guidelines to help people design their usual diet so that it will promote a healthy lifestyle and will present a minimum risk for the development of diet related diseases.

These guidelines are:

1. Eat a wide variety of different foods.

A different variety of foods gives your body the necessary vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that it needs to remain healthy.

2. Eat lots of whole grain breads and cereals, vegetables, and fruits.

Your body needs the fiber, vitamins, and minerals that can only be obtained from these items in their natural state.

3. Ensure that your diet is low in saturated fat.

Saturated fat increases your cholesterol levels and could lead to heart diseases and other ailments.

4. Balance food intake and physical activity to maintain a healthy body weight.

Energy taken into your body in the form of food needs to be a burnt off in the form of exercise, otherwise your body transforms the food into fat.

5. Limit your intake if you drink alcohol.

Alcohol does not give your body any useful nutrients; it suppresses your inhibitions and could lead to other well-documented problems as well.

6. Consume only moderate amounts of sugars, including foods that contain added sugar.

Sugar contains a large amount of calories that can be very difficult to balance with physical activity, especially given the amount of sugars that we find in our modern day foods and candies.

7. Make low-salt foods your preference and use salt sparingly.

Salt is known to increase blood pressure, which could lead to all kinds of cardiovascular and other diseases.

8. Encourage and support breast-feeding.

For the first six months of an infant's life natural breast feeding can provide the child with all the natural nutrients that it needs, provided that the mother is well-nourished.

9. Girls and women should eat more foods containing calcium.

Women suffer greater risk from osteoporosis and must therefore increase their calcium intake to fight this terrible disease.

10. Girls, women, vegetarians, and athletes should eat more foods containing iron.

The iron requirements of women and girls are almost doubled by menstrual losses. Iron deficiency in the diets of vegetarians and the increased demands put on the bodies of athletes also require them to increase their iron intake.

Even though these 10 dietary guidelines were developed in Australia for Australians they are equally applicable to anybody else in any country of the world, and every single person will benefit by following them.

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