Revision of food-based dietary guidelines for Ireland, Phase 2: recommendations for healthy eating and affordability

Abstract

Objective: To revise the food-based dietary guidelines for Ireland and assess the affordability of healthy eating. Design: An iterative process was used to develop 4 d food intake patterns (n 22) until average intakes met a range of nutrient and energy goals (at moderate and sedentary activity levels) that represented the variable nutritional requirements of all in the population aged 5 years and older. Dietary guidelines were formulated describing the amounts and types of foods that made up these intake patterns. Foods required for healthy eating by typical households in Ireland were priced and affordability assessed as a proportion of relevant weekly social welfare allowances. Setting: Government agency/community. Subjects: General population aged 51 years. Results: Food patterns developed achieved energy and nutrient goals with the exception of dietary fibre (inadequate for adults with energy requirements ,9?2 MJ) and vitamin D (inadequate for everyone). A new food group to guide on fats/oils intake was developed. Servings within the Bread, Cereal and Potato group were sub-categorized on the basis of energy content. Recommendations on numbers of servings from each food group were developed to guide on energy and nutrient requirements. Healthy eating is least affordable for families with children who are dependent on social welfare. Conclusion: Daily supplementation with vitamin D is recommended. Wholemeal breads and cereals are recommended as the best source of energy and fibre. Lowfat dairy products and reduced-fat unsaturated spreads are prioritized to achieve saturated fat and energy goals. Interventions are required to ensure that healthy eating is affordable.

Supermarket own brand foods: lower in energy cost but similar in nutritional quality to their market brand alternatives

“…In the current economic downturn, there has been a proliferation in the availability of cheaper foods from discount chains and supermarket own brand (OB) ranges as competition for the corresponding market brand (MB) products. However, in contrast to higher diet costs that have been associated with higher nutritional quality (NQ) (Friel et al ., ; Maillot et al ., ,b; Lo et al ., ; Flynn et al ., ), lower cost diets have been associated with higher energy densities (ED) but at the cost of NQ (Drewnowski & Specter, ; Drewnowski et al ., ).…”

International approaches to developing healthy eating patterns for national dietary guidelines

“…The development of food composites has been seen as a rigorous and objective approach to establishing food patterns and has the advantage of being realistic and practical, since these composites incorporate consumption information from the particular country and reflect the available food supply 7 , 13 , 14 , 38 , 48 . Since nutrient profiles reflect relative consumption, limitations of this approach are that some composites may provide relatively low levels of certain nutrients if richer sources are less commonly consumed 30 , 49 .…”

Gender differences in food intake among Irish community-dwelling elderly subjects: The ELDERMET project

“…Cross-gender, food group variance among the more senior group (n = 102) was limited to alcohol intake; with males consuming significantly more than females (P < 0.05). In addition, females from both age groups showed higher compliance rates with the recently revised Irish dietary guidelines for adults aged > 51 y (3) . Other food groups analysed incl.chips, pasta/rice, fish products, chicken products, butter, spreads, high-fat dairy, low-fat dairy, dessets/sweets, savoury snacks and ready meals for which no significant differences (P < 0.05) existed between groups.…”