Most Australians are not consuming enough dairy, UniSA study shows

Most Australians aren’t getting their recommended three serves of dairy a day, researchers from the University of South Australia (UniSA) have found. Apparently, 73% of women and 58% of men fail to consume their recommended daily intake. Teenagers are worse than adults, with 62% of boys and 83% of girls not managing to consume the recommended amount.

Co-author of the study Professor Leonie Segal said the under-consumption is likely to be having a significant detrimental effect on Australians’ health.

“There is growing evidence linking recommended dairy food intake to better health outcomes and our study results highlight the need to promote increased dairy consumption in public health campaigns,” Segal said.

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) draft Dietary Guidelines contain evidence statements that show dairy consumption is linked to a reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, hypertension, type2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and colorectal cancer.

These evidence statements also reportedly show that milk, cheese and yoghurt are not linked to an increased risk of obesity. Surprisingly, this relates to both reduced-fat and regular-fat varieties of dairy.

“There is a tendency to focus on low consumption of fruit and vegetables and the over-consumption of junk food, but it is important to consider the whole diet, including the intake of dairy foods, if we are to address diet-related disease,” Professor Segal said.

The study was published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health and forms part of a larger analysis that was funded by a Dairy Australia grant. Dairy Australia said it “provided industry estimates for per capita consumption of milk, cheese and yoghurt, but otherwise had no role in the development, analysis or drafting of the research article, or in the decision to publish”.