Food and Nutrition

The following five food groups make up the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating. Foods are grouped together by the amounts of key nutrients they provide. For example the fruit group is a good source of vitamins, especially vitamin C.

To meet your nutritional requirements and enjoy good health, you need to eat a varied diet drawing the recommended number of serves from each of the five food groups every day. While some foods you need to eat every day, other may need to be eaten occasionally.

A good guide to natural foods is their colour. Different coloured foods are an indicator of different nutrients. if you aim for a colourful diet you will be pretty close to the balance you need. These colours indicate variety both within groups and between them.

Have a look at the food groups below to see the foods that you can choose to eat from them:

Fruit

A wide variety of fruit is available in Australia. Choosing fruits in season is not only cheaper but provides better value and better quality over the course of a year.
Choose fruits from these different fruit categories:

• pome fruits eg apples and pears
• citrus fruit eg oranges, mandarins and grapefruit
• stone fruit eg apricots, cherries, peaches, nectarines and plums
• tropical fruit eg bananas, mangoes, pineapple and melons
• berries eg strawberries, blueberries
• vine fruits such as grapes and passionfruit.

After the age of nine the recommended intake is 2 serves per day.

Grain ( cereal ) foods

Grain foods may be wheat, oats, rice, rye, barley, millet, quinoa or corn based. They can be cooked and eaten whole, ground into flour or made into ready-to-eat products such as breakfast cereals.

Grains (cereal) foods can be broken up into four main sub-groups:

Breads

• Wholemeal, wholegrain, white, rye, pita, lavash, naan, focaccia, crispbreads

Breakfast Cereals

• Ready to eat, oats, porridge, muesli, wholewheat biscuits

Grains

• Rice, barley, corn, polenta, buckwheat, spelt, millet, rye, quinoa, semolina

Other products

• Pasta, noodles, English muffins, crumpets, rice cakes, couscous, bulgur

At least 4-6 serves of cereal foods per day are recommended for Australian adults.

Lean Meat and other protein

Most adult males need to eat less red meat and women and children need to eat more. Foods in this food group are considered ‘protein rich’ and most Australians have no trouble eating enough protein each day. Protein foods are an important part of Australian culture and lifestyle, and as such a wide variety of foods are eaten from this group.

This group includes lean meat and poultry, fish, eggs, tofu, nuts and seeds and legumes/beans.

Foods from this food group fall into 6 categories. These are:

Lean meats

• Beef, lamb, veal, pork, kangaroo, lean (lower salt) sausages

Poultry

• Chicken, turkey, duck, emu, goose, bush birds

Fish and seafood

• Fish, prawns, crab, lobster, mussels, oysters, scallops, clams

Eggs

• Chicken eggs, duck eggs

Nuts and seeds

• Almonds, pine nuts, walnut, macadamia, hazelnut, cashew, peanut, nut spreads, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, brazil nuts

Legumes/beans

• All beans, lentils, chickpeas, split peas, tofu.

Depending on your age the Guidelines recommend that you eat 1-3 serves of foods from this food group every day.

Milk, yoghurt, cheese and/or their alternatives

Low or reduced fat dairy products are recommended for most people over the age of two, however most Australians  only consume about half the recommended serves. They do eat eat too many of the full fat varieties, increasing kilojoules and saturated fat in the diet.

1. Reduced fat milks are not suitable  for children under the age of two.
2. Infants under the age of 12 months should not be given cow’s milk as a main drink.
3. Breast milk or specially prepared infant formula should be given to infants under 12-months of age as the main milk source.

A wide range of dairy and alternative products are available. Examples of milk, yoghurt, cheese and/or alternatives include:

Milks

• All reduced fat or full cream milks, plain and flavoured, long life, powdered and evaporated milk, and soy beverages (calcium fortified)

Yoghurt

• All yoghurts including reduced fat or full cream, plain and flavoured, soy yoghurt (calcium fortified)

Cheese

• All cheeses, hard and soft, reduced or full fat for example cheddar,Edam, Gouda and Soy cheeses (calcium fortified).

Most people need at least 2-3 serves each day. Women over 50 require 4 serves per day due to their high calcium requirement.

Vegetables and Legumes / Beans

Vegetables come from different parts of the plant, depending on which plant family they come from. These can include leaves, roots, tubers, flowers, stems, seeds and shoots. When eaten as vegetables, legumes are seeds – in their immature form as green peas and beans;  as dried peas, beans, lentils and chickpeas when mature.

Vegetables can be broken down into different groups, with the main sub-groups being:

Dark green or cruciferous/brassica

• Broccoli, brussels sprouts, bok choy, cabbages, cauliflower, kale
  Lettuce, silverbeet, spinach, snow peas

Root/tubular/bulb vegetables

• Potato, cassava, sweet potato, taro, carrots, beetroot, onions, shallots, garlic, bamboo shoots, swede, turnip

Legumes/beans

• Red kidney beans, soybeans, lima beans, cannellini beans, chickpeas, lentils, split peas, tofu

Other vegetables

• Tomato, celery, sprouts, zucchini, squash, avocado, capsicum, eggplant, mushrooms, cucumber, okra, pumpkin, green peas, green beans

Most adults should eat at least 5 serves from the vegetable group a day.

Information courtesy of eatforhealth.gov.au