Artice: Australians young and old fail health test
Australians young and old are failing to meet national guidelines for exercise and nutrition, according to two major surveys of more than 30,000 people.
The studies released today have painted a grim picture of a slothful, unhealthy nation of people eating poorly and exercising inadequately.
One of the surveys, of 16,000 adult Australians, showed one in four – 25 per cent – meet physical activity guidelines, while 55 per cent eat enough fruit and 15 per cent eat enough vegetables.
But an alarmingly small number – fewer than five per cent – met the criteria for all three guidelines, a statistic the University of Sydney and Deakin University researchers say is “extremely concerning”.
A separate study of about 18,500 teenagers aged 12 to 17 showed just 14 per cent met exercise recommendations for young people, 20 per cent ate enough vegetables and 39 per cent ate enough fruit.
The researchers from the Cancer Council Victoria found that students were consuming too much junk food, with 46 per cent having fast food meals at least twice a week.
Half ate snack foods four or more times per week, and 44 per cent drank high-energy drinks just as frequently, according to the study published in the journal Health Promotion International.
“Students’ dietary behaviour was found to be related to their television viewing habits, with heavier television use associated with lower consumption of fruit and higher consumption of unhealthy foods of low nutritional value,” author Dr Victoria White said.
National guidelines recommend two-and-a-half hours of moderate intensity exercise a week for adults and double this for teenagers.
People should also consume two half-cup servings of fruit and five half-cup servings of vegetables a day.
The adult study, published in the International Journal of Obesity, showed most people were fulfilling one of these, but did not seem to understand the importance of combining them.
“You need to be doing them all,” Dr Evan Atlantis of the University of Sydney’s Department of Exercise and Sports Science said.
“Consuming the wrong food and and not expending enough energy is a recipe for obesity, and that’s what we’re doing to ourselves.”
Overall, extremely low vegetable consumption was most concerning, with leading nutritionist Dr Rosemary Stanton saying vegetables seemed to have lost their place in the daily diet.
“The evening meal of meat and veg has given way to a slice of pizza, some instant noodles, a bar eaten in the car on the way to a meeting,” Dr Stanton said.
“The vegetables have disappeared at home, they’re hard find in takeaway food and if you go to a restaurant you’ve got to order them separately and pay extra.”
Studies have linked vegetable intake to lower rates of a myriad of diseases, including cancer, diabetes and obesity.
Tamara McLean
For more information please contact eatingsafe.com on 1300654622 or info@eatingsafe.com
Back to Media Releases