Diet and physical activity in Australian adults

Intake of core foods

Fruit and vegetable intake

In 2022–23, 56.2% of Australians aged 18 years and over did not meet the guidelines for recommended daily serves of fruit, while 93.7% did not meet the guidelines for recommended daily serves of vegetables. The overwhelming majority of adults (95.9%) failed to meet both guidelines.¹ This means that less than 5% of Australian adults have diets that are consistent with fruit and vegetable recommendations.

Fruit and vegetable consumption over time

Between 2007–08 and 2022–23, there was little improvement in the proportion of Australian adults consuming the recommended number of serves of fruit, vegetables, or both fruit and vegetables. Throughout that time period, around half of adults failed to consume recommended serves of fruit, while more than 9 out of 10 failed to consume recommended serves of vegetables.¹

Discretionary food intake

Percentage of daily energy intake from discretionary food

Comprehensive national surveys of the diets of Australians are conducted relatively infrequently, making it difficult to understand recent changes in dietary intakes and food consumption patterns. However, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has recently completed a new National Nutrition and Physical Activity Study, and the data are expected to be released by early 2025.

In 2011–12, when the last survey was carried out, more than one-third of total daily energy in the diets of Australian adults came from foods and beverages classified as discretionary. Discretionary foods are high in energy but low in nutrients and are not needed to meet nutrient requirements.² By age group, discretionary food intake accounted for 36% of total energy intake for 19 to 30-year-olds; 35% for 31 to 50-year-olds; 33% for 51 to 70-year-olds; and 34% for Australians aged 71 and older.³ Key contributors to adults’ discretionary food intake include alcoholic drinks, soft drinks, cakes and muffins, chocolate, fried potato products, sweet biscuits and pastries.³

Apparent consumption data from 2020–21, which records the total amount of foods purchased from food retailers, averaged across the whole Australian population, showed that 38.1% of the energy available from all foods was from foods classified as discretionary, an average of 3,382 kJ per person per day.⁴

Average intake of added sugars

Added sugars are those added to foods by manufacturers or consumers, excluding those naturally present in honey, syrups and fruit juices.² The World Health Organization recommends limiting energy from free sugars to less than 10% of daily energy intake.⁵ Note that the WHO recommendation relates to ‘free sugars’, which is a broader category including those naturally present, and total intakes of free sugars are likely to be higher than implied by the ‘added sugar’ data provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Men aged 19 to 30 years had the highest average intake of added sugars in 2011–12. Average intake of added sugars decreased with age, and men consumed more added sugars than women. More recent data show in 2020–21, there was an average of 63.6 grams of added sugars per person per day, in foods purchased from retail outlets.⁴ The major food groups contributing to this were non-alcoholic beverages (26.2%, primarily from soft drinks and cordials), sugar products including spreads and jams (24.0%), and confectionery (18.9%).⁴

Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption

More than one in five Australian adults (21%) consumed sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) such as soft drinks, cordials and sports drinks at least weekly in 2020–21, and 6.4% consumed them daily. By age group, the highest consumers of SSBs were 18 to 24-year-olds, 36.2% of whom consumed SSBs at least once a week and 8.5% consumed them daily.⁶

Physical activity

Physical activity snapshot

In 2022–23, only 24.7% of Australian adults met physical activity guidelines. The proportion of those meeting the guidelines varied by age group. The guidelines state that adults aged 18–64 years should be active most days of the week, accumulate 150 to 300 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous intensity physical activity (or an equivalent combination) each week, and do muscle strengthening activities on at least two days each week. Adults aged 18–24 years were most likely to meet this recommendation (31.3%), and those aged 55–64 were the least likely (16.1%).⁷

Physical activity over time

There was a slight increase in the proportion of adults that met the guidelines for sufficient physical activity between 2014–15 and 2022–23. In 2014–15 the age-standardised proportion of adults who were sufficiently active (excluding workplace activity) was 14.8% increasing to 23.6% in 2022–23.¹

Sedentary behaviour over time

Sedentary behaviour (sitting, reclining or lying) has been associated with increased morbidity and mortality, and is increasingly recognised as an important health risk. A high proportion of Australian adults report sitting for more than seven hours at work and leisure, on a typical workday.

More than half of full time employed Australian adults spent 7 hours or more sitting on a typical workday. This was fairly constant between 2007–08 (54.3%) and 2011–12 (56.2%).⁸

Content for this page was written by Melanie Nichols, Deakin University and reviewed by Kathryn Backholer and Gary Sacks, Co-Directors at the Global Centre for Preventive Health and Nutrition at Deakin University. For more information about the approach to content on the site please see About | Obesity Evidence Hub.