So what is healthy eating?
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), eating a variety of foods and consuming less salt, sugars, and saturated and industrially-produced trans-fats is essential for a healthy diet.
A healthy diet incorporates a combination of different foods. These include staples like cereals (wheat, barley, corn or rice), starchy tubers or roots (potato, yam, taro or cassava), legumes (lentils and beans), fruit and vegetables, and animal sources like meat, fish, eggs and dairy.
To follow a healthy diet, you need to eat a wide variety of food from these groups, but not in equal amounts.
Focus on eating plenty of fruit and vegetables, as they‘re important sources of vitamins, minerals, dietary fibre, plant protein and antioxidants.
People with diets that include a lot of fruit and vegetables have a significantly lower risk of obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and certain types of cancer.
Avoid consuming food and drinks high in fat, sugar, salt and alcohol.
For a healthy diet, and to avoid unnecessary weight gain, total fat consumption shouldn’t exceed 30% of your overall energy intake, and sugar intake should be less than 10%.
Make healthy choices, like fruit instead of a sweet treat, and water instead of sugary soft drinks, fruit juices, flavoured milk and alcohol.
And keep the serve sizes down. Only eat the right amount of food to meet your body’s daily needs.
To be honest, none of these tips are new to most people.
Despite this most of us aren’t following the advice.
A recent South Australian study found that less than 1 in 10 adults eat the recommended servings of at least five vegetables per day, and less than half eat enough servings of two pieces of fruit.