Building a Healthy, Active Australia

The 'Building a Healthy, Active Australia' initiative recognises that we need a balanced approach towards nutrition and physical activity to promote healthy habits for life. Importantly, the initiative is focussed on children, because healthy and active children live better and learn better, and grow up to be more healthy and active adults.

A healthy diet should include a good variety of nutritious foods. In general, we should all eat: A wide variety of nutritious foods, plenty of breads and cereals (particularly wholegrain), vegetables, legumes (such as chickpeas) and fruit, low salt foods, use salt sparingly, and small amounts of foods which contain added sugars.

A good balance between exercise and food intake is important, as this helps to maintain a healthy body weight A healthy diet can include a moderate amount of alcohol (men should drink less than two standard drinks per day and women less than one standard drink per day). Alcohol should not be given to children.

Test yourself: Healthy Body Quiz Food Quiz Water Quiz Calculate how many kilojoules you need each day Use the Kilojoule Counter to calculate how many kilojoules are in the food you eat… Calculate the calories you burn when exercising in different ways…

Photo courtesy of flickr