Fruit, vegetables and discretionary food intake in Australian adults: Past trends and predicted progress towards population preventive health targets for 2030

Objective

In Australia, ‘improving access to and the consumption of a healthy diet’ is a focus in the National Preventive Health Strategy. The objective of this paper is to describe the past trends and future projections of population intakes against the Strategy’s targets of increasing fruit consumption to 2 servings per day; increasing vegetables to 5 servings; and reducing discretionary foods to <20% of total energy by 2030.

Methods

Self-reported intake data were available from an online survey of 275,170 Australian adults collected between 2015 and 2023. Dietary intake was modelled for sex and four age groups and forecasted towards 2030 using gamma-generalised linear models.

Results

By 2030, fruit intake is predicted to decrease by 9.7%, discretionary food intake predicted to increase by 18.3%, and vegetable intake predicted to remain stable (but well short of national targets). Differences by sex and age group included an increase in fruit predicted for 18-30 year-olds, and a decrease in vegetables for females but an increase for males.

Conclusions

Without significant intervention, it will be difficult to meet Australia’s preventive health dietary targets.

Implications for Public Health

Continuous monitoring will be important to inform targeted interventions to improve diet quality and health outcomes.