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Tuck into 25 grams of fibre: Lower your risk of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and bowel cancer by ensuring you consume 25g of fibre a day (30g for men). Most of us only manage about 18g of fibre daily, but a few dietary tweaks could change that. Try eating breakfast cereals with barley, wheat or oats (check the sugar content), switch to wholemeal or multigrain breads and increase the amount of vegetables, legumes and fruit you eat (keeping the skin on fruit such as apples and pears is a great way to add fibre).
Drink fewer than 14 standard units of alcohol a week: This is the maximum amount of alcohol women should drink per week, but don’t save all your beverages up for one big night – downing five or more standard drinks in one sitting could be harmful to your health. It’s important to know what a standard drink is: an average serve of wine at a restaurant is about 150ml, though your wine glass at home could be far bigger. As a guide, a 150ml glass (with 11.5 per cent alcohol volume) or a 150ml flute of sparkling wine (with 12 per cent alcohol volume) are both 1.4 standard drinks.
Limit sugar to 50 grams: This equates to 12 teaspoons per day, but the average Australian currently consumes 30 teaspoons of sugar daily. Naturally occurring sugars such as those found in milk, fruits and vegetables aren’t the real problem – it’s the added refined sugars in foods such as cakes, sweets and soft drinks that come with no nutritional benefits that we need to avoid. To give you an idea, a 50 gram bar of chocolate contains 7 teaspoons of sugar, while a 375ml can of soft drink has 10 teaspoons – almost your entire recommended daily serve, with little nutritional value. Intra-abdominal fat (the fat carried around your waist) coats the areas around and near important organs including the heart, liver and kidneys, and even a small deposit of this type of fat can increase your risk of chronic disease such as Type 2 diabetes and stroke.
Serve food on a 25cm plate: In the 1970s, the average home dinner plate measured about 25cm in diameter. Today, some dinner plates are 29.5cm to 31cm in diameter, so our concept of the correct food portions has changed. So, find a smaller plate and divide it up this way: take up 50 per cent of the plate with vegetables or salad, 25 per cent with proteins and 25 per cent with carbohydrates.
Eat less than 6 grams of salt a day: We eat too much salt and much of our daily intake (75 per cent) comes from processed foods. Having too much salt in our diet can increase our blood pressure and the risk of cardiovascular disease. Aim for less than 2300mg of sodium (about 6 grams of salt) a day. Check sodium levels on food labels – less than 120mg of sodium per 100g is low, while more than 500mg per 100g is high.
The 2 and 5: That’s two serves of fruit and five serves of vegetables – which is the minimum daily recommendation for adults. To break this down, a standard serve of vegetables is 75 grams (think ½ cup of cooked broccoli, spinach and carrots, or ½ a medium potato), while a standard serve of fruit is 150 grams (a medium apple, banana or orange). Limit your intake of fruit juice and dried fruit, as they seem healthy, but can be high in sugar. A six year study by The University of Queensland has revealed that women who eat at least two servings of fruit a day are less likely to suffer from depression.
Reach 28 grams of wholegrains: Including more wholegrain foods, such as brown rice, rolled oats and wholegrain bread, in your everyday diet can lower mortality by up to 15 per cent, and the risk of death from heart disease in particular, say researchers at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
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