Healthy eating is hearty challenge
Some people think the solution to healthy eating is just to keep telling us to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, cereals and grains and lean meats and to prepare our meals at home. We know we should, most of us would like to, but the reality is that our busy lives don’t always make it easy. Over the past few years, the Heart Foundation has been studying where and when Australians eat and, not surprisingly, we are spending more time and more money eating out or picking up takeaways. Like it or not, Australians eat 2.7 million meals at fast food restaurants every day. One in every three dollars we spend on food is on meals prepared outside of our homes and this trend will continue. We asked Australians how we could help them and a resounding eight out of 10 wanted healthier choices when eating out. For 20 years, the Heart Foundation Tick has challenged food companies to develop healthier products and we have helped make choosing healthier products easier for increasingly busy people. The Tick simply lets people know the food is a healthier choice when compared with similar foods. Last week, Crust Gourmet Pizza Bars announced six pizzas which had earned the Heart Foundation Tick. Pizza is our third most popular takeaway and pizza chains sell 190 million pizzas a year in Australia. A pizza does not have to be unhealthy, but our testing showed pizza from the top two chains contained on average more than 5g of salt and 20g of saturated fat. That is more than any person should be getting in one day, let alone one meal. Cameron Prout is CEO of the Heart Foundation, Queensland. The Courier Mail, February 29.
