HOW WE BROKE THE STORY

Feast and famine for Australia

Tuesday, January 29, 2019 OUR diet has become so poor that the two thirds of Australians who are overweight are now also malnourished.

A Saturday Telegraph investigation has found Australian women are deficient in calcium and iron, while all of us are eating far less fibre than we need to be.

The nutrition problem is so extreme in some indigenous communities that one in five children suffer from stunted growth and physical wasting on a scale worse than West Africa, leading nutrition expert and Queensland University Professor Amanda Lee said.

This is because a third of the energy intake of adults and 40 per cent of children’s intake now comes from junk food.

News Corp in partnership with the Heart Foundation today calls on the federal government to establish a national nutrition strategy that will include policies to reduce sugar and salt in the Australian diet, cut consumption of saturated fats and increase consumption of fruit and vegetables and whole grains.

The strategy would include a sugar tax, a ban on junk food advertising to children, improved food labelling, removing soft drinks and junk food from schools and hospitals, subsidies for healthy food and funding for a new national health survey. Experts are also alarmed that the federal Health Department has refused to fund the next Australian Health Survey.