Get nanny’s nose out of the fridge

Healthy it may be, and tasty, but sitting down to a steak or a lamb roast with vegetables and a glass of wine, or milk for the children, followed by a punnet of strawberries or blackberries may not be good enough for the green food police. Think of the greenhouse gas emissions, the waste water, the habitat loss. Add a dollop of guilt to the sauce. And if the fruit packaging is not biodegradable or recyclable, it’s worse again. Aside from nutrition, the National Health and Medical Research Council is making “sustainable diets” a “very high priority” in revising its 2013 Australian dietary guidelines. But such ideologically driven interference is likely to make many health practitioners, patients and those interested in healthy eating take the guidelines with a big pinch of pink salt.

Most people are too busy looking for bargains at the supermarket, cooking or making school lunches to pay attention. But the NHMRC, the nation’s main health advisory body, defines “sustainable diets” as “accessible, affordable and equitable diets with low environmental impacts”. Its current guidelines list “food, nutrition and environmental sustainability” as appendix G, making them easy to overlook. But in the new guidelines, due in 2026 – bureaucracies hasten slowly – sustainability will be upfront “to improve integration of messages about food sustainability into the guidelines”.

Farmers, who already are preparing for an avalanche of green tape and extra costs to comply with new rules for climate reporting, are rightly annoyed and worried. Individuals have the right to feed their families nutritious food without mixed messaging about the environment or other sustainability considerations, Red Meat Advisory Council chairman John McKillop told rural reporter Charlie Peel. Expanding the dietary guidelines into other non-nutritional related areas, as Mr McKillop says, will create confusion and undermine their purpose and the public’s confidence in them. Dietary guidelines, he says, should focus on promoting public health, preventing chronic diseases and ensuring Australians have access to accurate and reliable information about their basic nutritional requirements.

In the current guidelines, appendix G is a mix of common sense (don’t overconsume), homespun advice (look in the fridge or cupboard before shopping) and a few mentions of waste, packaging, habitat loss and the amount of water used in beef cattle production. There’s no need to waste money expanding the message.

Get out the steak knives to set the table.