What Australian diet experts really eat exposed
CHOCOLATE, marshmallows, full fat double brie cheese and wine are not the items you'd expect to find in the shopping baskets of Australia's leading diet experts.
CHOCOLATE, marshmallows, full fat double brie cheese and wine are not the items you'd expect to find in the shopping baskets of Australia's leading diet experts.
As consumers battle conflicting dietary messages about sugar, carbohydrates and fat, News Corp Australia went shopping with the people who advise us what to eat and discovered some unexpected indulgences.
They suggest avoiding those supermarket aisles loaded with biscuits, salty snacks and sugary drinks and head for the fresh vegetable and meat section if you want to trim your waistline and help your heart.
But you don't need to live like a puritan to stay in shape. All four health experts admitted they indulged in chocolate, usually the dark variety, and they all drank wine most days.
Surprisingly, the shopping basket of Weight Watchers director Martha Lourey-Bird featured the most indulgences - Lindor ball chocolates, marshmallows and champagne.
This is because it's not just what you eat that counts but what exercise you do to burn and earn the extra calories, she says.
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Martha Lourey-Bird, Program Director, Weight Watchers Australia
Martha Lourey-Bird, 43 is the mother two primary school aged children and has a husband who travels extensively. She's in charge of managing Weight Watcher's eating plan in Australia.
"We eat lots of fresh food including stir fry, fish, salad, vegetables, roasts and there are no separate meals for the children I just tone down the spice, she says.
"I put all the vegetables on the children's plate and tell them to try them all and they can leave just one," she says.
Ms Lourey-Bird never eats packaged foods for a main meal but as a once a week treat she makes packet cupcakes or pancakes with her children.
Her nightly treat is one or two Lindor chocolate balls and a glass of champagne.
"At Weight Watchers we encourage people to have teats, if you deny yourself something on a diet you'll want to eat those foods.," she says
Her secret is exercising for an hour a day to earn enough points to indulge in her treat.
"A chocolate is only two propoints, chocolate mudcake is 24," she says.
Also in her shopping basket is a packet of marshmallows for a weekly ritual which sees her toast the sweet on an open fire with her children.
Weight Watchers works on a system of propoints that take into account the kilojoules but also the fibre, carbohydrate, fat, sugar and protein in the diet. Each person is allocated 26 propoints a day and can earn more by exercising. There are 49 additional points available each week for an occasional indulgence.
Kerry Doyle, Chief Executive, Heart Foundation NSW
The mother of five adult children and grandmother of seven Kerry Doyle runs the NSW branch of the Heart Foundation which provides governments and the public with dietary advice designed to reduce the risk of heart disease.
"If it is fresh it's going to be good for you," is Ms Doyle's guiding shopping principle.
Her basket contains wholemeal bread rolls, canned tuna in spring water, avocado, tomato, lettuce and fresh nectarines mangoes and low fat yoghurt.
"I have a family issue with cholesterol and take the low fat principle really carefully. If I buy anything in a pack the first thing I look for is the salt content," she says.
Australians eat two to three times the recommended 6 grams of salt a day and it is associated with high blood pressure which is linked to heart disease.
Kerry Doyle's weekly indulgence is a block of Lindt dark chocolate with blood orange and a glass of red wine.
"If you've had a hard day a strip of dark chocolate is a good way of reminding yourself you're lucky to be in this country," she said.
The principles of good eating are all about smaller quantities and balance rather than living a puritanical life, she says.
More Australians now eating outside the home and they should use the kilojoule counts that the Heart Foundation lobbied to have included in take away menus.
These should help Australians decide on choices that have a more sensible energy content, she says.
Peter Clifton, Professor Nutrition, University South Australia and creator CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet
The man who helped invent the best selling CSIRO Total Wellbeing does not himself eat the large amounts of red meat it recommends. Indeed he eats vegetarian twice a week.
"I always have trouble buying stuff at the supermarket because there are just aisles of processed snack foods and biscuits which are not satisfying taste wise and are very calorie rich," he says.
Professor Clifton's shopping basket is filled with milk, cheese, cherry tomatoes, sweet corn nectarines and free range chicken.
The Total Wellbeing diet recommends 800 grams of red meat a week and research money for the book came from Meat and Livestock Australia.
Its high red meat content is double that recommended by the National Health and Medical Research Council and was the source of a protest by leading nutritionists.
"We don't usually buy red meat because my wife is ideologically opposed to it after the revelations of animal cruelty in the live meat trade," says Professor Clifton who has to wait until the couple eats out to get his fill.
Fish is on his menu three times a week, chicken twice a week and he has a vegetarian meal twice a week.
As an indulgence he eats two squares of Lindt dark chocolate a night, usually the orange or chilli varieties.
Any more, he says, and the calories start to outweigh the health benefits.
He also consumes two glasses of red wine four to five nights a week "because it is nice".
"Health and alcohol is a tricky issue. There is a strong core of people who think the epidemiology in the studies is flawed,' he says.
"There is a dose relationship. You can see benefit at three to four glasses, after that the cancer risk takes off," he says.
Professor John Funder, Executive Chairman, Obesity Australia
The front man of the nation's leading obesity lobby group Professor Funder is a medical researcher who also runs a Yarra Valley vineyard that provides grapes for prize winning chardonnays.
John Funder doesn't shop at a supermarket preferring the Victoria Markets in Melbourne. His basket is loaded with beef fillets, flathead tails, smoked salmon, pork mince, vegetables and a huge round of double brie cheese as he prepares for a series of Christmas parties.
The guiding principle of the Funder daily diet is protein and low glycaemic index foods (wholegrains that take time to digest).
"Protein turns on satiety," says Professor Funder.
"Neither my wife Valerie not I have got a sweet tooth but we like a seedy wholegrain bread that looks like and weighs as much as a brick," he says.
A slice of this bread topped with a poached egg for lunch will stop you getting hungry until dinnertime, he says.
He and his wife eat meat or fish every night with lots of vegetables.
"We don't eat dessert or cakes unless it's Christmas or a birthday," he says.
However, because he lives on a vineyard he says he drinks two to three glasses of chardonnay or red wine every night.
Defending the huge wheel of brie in his shopping basket he claims it will be shared between 30 people at a Christmas party.
His weakness is Haigh's dark chocolate with almonds and occasionally he'll eat vanilla ice cream.
The principles of healthy eating are about balancing protein and fat, ensuring any carbohydrates consumed are low GI and "very fresh food", he says.
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