Real estate agents have a healthy diet, says CSIRO

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Sep 27, 2016

Real estate agents have a healthy diet, says CSIRO

The CSIRO has revealed which professions have the healthiest diets, and real estate agents are near the top of the list.

Image: CSIRO.

The CSIRO has released the findings of the biggest ever study of the dietary habits of Australians, and found that workers in the real estate industry are some of the healthiest eaters in the nation.

The CSIRO surveyed the diets of 86,500 Australian adults over a 12-month period, and provided a score for each individaul out of 100.

The CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet report shows the average score for the nation is 59 out of 100, which is, worryingly, well below the healthy-eating benchmark of 70 out of 100.

Workers in the 'public servants / real estate' occuptions achieve a mean result of 58 out of 100. Not surprisingly, workers in the 'health industry' achieved the best result: 62 out of 100. Homemakers, those in 'education/research', and students also rated highly.

The poorest ratings were given to workers in the construction sector and the unemployed, which both achieved ratings of 54 out of 100.

Average diet score by occupation

Source: CSIRO.

CSIRO Research Director and co-author of the report, Professor Manny Noakes said he hopes Australian will be inspired by the findings to improve their diets.

"If we can raise our collective score by just over 10 points, we help Australia mitigate against the growing rates of obesity and lifestyle diseases such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and a third of all cancers," he said.

The report also highlights the amount of "discretionary" food, or junk food, that Australians eat, and here again real estate workers fared well.

'Public servants / real estate' workers eat only 17.4 average weekly serves of discretionary food, compared with 29.4 serves in the construction sector. The only sector to do better than real estate was the health industry sector, with only 16.7 serves.

The report showed that women have better nutritional levels than men (60 v 56 out of 100).

The 2016 CSIRO Healthy Diet Score tracked food avoidance in diets for the first time, and found that around one third of Australian adults are avoiding one or more foods, including gluten, dairy or meat.

You can take the CSIRO Healthy Diet Score here.