Nutrition indicators: how does Australia compare?

Background -- Indicators are important for assessing progress towards Australia's nutrition goals (1). While there are no formally endorsed indicators for use in monitoring nutrition in Australia, the Dietary Guidelines for Australian Adults (2) is a key statement of the Australian Government's policy goals and directions for supporting better nutritional outcomes for the population. Objectives -- a) To identify available data for reporting against the new Dietary Guidelines for Australian Adults. b) To investigate available international data relevant to these indicators. Design -- The indicators presented in this report are aligned to the dietary guidelines and were selected based on those which have been historically reported against. Data from Canada, New Zealand, France, Japan, the USA and the UK were sourced by request and through the internet. Only published data that are freely available are reported. Outcomes -- Key data sources include the 1995 National Nutrition Survey, the ongoing National Health Survey, apparent consumption data, and the 1989 Risk Factor Prevalence Survey. However, it is evident that key components of these data are no longer recent - in particular, the data relating to dietary intakes and biomedical risk factors. The international data presented suggest that Australian data collection is largely comparable to that in a range of similar other countries, and in some cases Australian data is shown to be very comprehensive. However, the available international data also highlighted other gaps and deficiencies, including the non-ongoing nature of some relevant Australian data collection. Conclusion -- There is a large body of data pertinent to food and nutrition indicators available in Australia, which is largely comparable to that in other countries. However, there is a lack of recent data, and little structure for ongoing data collection for monitoring purposes. A formally endorsed set of indicators for use in Australia would assist in guiding future data collection and provide a consistent forum for monitoring trends relating to food and nutrition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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