Overview

The food and beverages we eat and drink (our diet) play an important role in our overall health and wellbeing. Diets that provide insufficient or excessive amounts of energy, nutrients and other components can result in ill health.

Health conditions that are often affected by our diet include overweight and obesity, coronary heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, some forms of cancer and type 2 diabetes.

Featured summary

Featured reports

Latest findings

Monitoring food and nutrition is important, however data are collected infrequently

Novel sources of data for food and nutrition monitoring have not been collected or extensively used for those purposes

3 to 8 serves of discretionary foods were consumed by children per day in 2011–12

7.1% of children aged 2–17 consumed sugar sweetened drinks daily in 2017–18

Nearly all Australians (99%) aged 2–18, and 9 in 10 adults aged 19 and over do not eat enough vegetables

Although fruit intake is closest to the recommendations, nearly 4 in 5 adults (77%) aged 19–50 do not eat enough

More reports and statistics on food and nutrition can be found under Physical activity and Overweight & obesity.