What the Australian Dietary Guidelines actually say about eating after 40.

01. The five principal recommendations.

At the top level, the guidelines are just five plainly worded recommendations. Stripped of jargon, they are:[2]

• Achieve and maintain a healthy weight by being physically active and choosing amounts of food and drink to meet your energy needs.
• Enjoy a wide variety of nutritious foods from the five food groups every day, and drink plenty of water.
• Limit foods containing saturated fat, added salt, added sugars and alcohol.
• Encourage, support and promote breastfeeding (relevant to infants rather than adults).
• Care for your food: prepare and store it safely.

The NHMRC treats each of these as equally important for public health.[2] For an adult over 40, the second and third recommendations carry most of the day-to-day weight, so the rest of this guide focuses there.

02. The five food groups.

The heart of the guidelines is the idea that a healthy diet draws from five food groups every day. Here they are, in the official wording, slightly condensed.[3]

Foods outside these groups, the biscuits, chips, soft drinks, alcohol and confectionery, are described as discretionary choices. They are not part of the five groups and the guidelines frame them as occasional rather than everyday foods.[3]

03. How much: the recommended serves.

The guidelines translate the five groups into a recommended number of serves per day, and this is where age and sex start to matter. The table below shows the recommendations for adults, drawn from the NHMRC's sample daily food patterns.[4]

A few things are worth noticing in those tables. The vegetable target sits at five to six serves for almost everyone, where a serve is about 75 grams.[5] Fruit holds steady at two serves across every adult age group. And the dairy recommendation actually rises for women over 50, from 2½ serves to 4, reflecting the increased importance of calcium for bone health in later life.[4] This is one of the clearest examples of the guidelines adjusting specifically for an older age group.

04. What changes in the guidelines as you age.

The guidelines are not a single fixed plate. Several recommendations shift with age, and the document explicitly addresses older adults as a group.

Protein recommendations rise for the over-70s

The NHMRC's companion document, the Nutrient Reference Values for Australia and New Zealand, sets a Recommended Dietary Intake for protein of 0.84g per kilogram of body weight for men and 0.75g per kilogram for women aged 19 to 70. For adults over 70, those figures rise to 1.07g per kilogram for men and 0.94g per kilogram for women.[6] The guidelines themselves note that older people should eat nutritious foods and stay physically active to help maintain muscle strength and a healthy weight.[2]

It is worth flagging that a substantial body of more recent international research argues these protein figures are conservative for anyone over 40 who wants to actively preserve muscle, not just prevent deficiency. We cover that evidence separately in our protein after 40 guide. The NHMRC values are the official Australian baseline; the research suggests many older adults benefit from aiming higher.

Calcium and bone health move up the priority list

The increased dairy recommendation for women over 50 is the guidelines' direct response to the accelerated bone density loss that can follow menopause. The extra serves are about calcium intake for bone protection rather than energy.[4]

Energy needs tend to fall, nutrient needs do not

The guidelines acknowledge a tension that becomes important after 40: as people age and often become less active, their energy needs may fall, yet their need for nutrients does not. The practical implication, in the document's own framing, is that there is less room for discretionary choices, because more of a smaller energy budget needs to come from nutrient-dense foods.[4] This is the nutritional reality behind the common experience that the way you ate at 30 stops working later on.

05. The limit, not just the list.

The guidelines are as clear about what to limit as what to eat. The third recommendation singles out four things to keep moderate: saturated fat, added salt, added sugars and alcohol.[2]

On fats specifically, the Heart Foundation Australia, whose advice aligns with the national guidelines, recommends a heart healthy eating pattern that favours monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats from foods like nuts, seeds, avocados, olives and oily fish, while limiting saturated and trans fats.[7] This matters more from the mid-40s onward, when research suggests the body's handling of lipids begins to shift.

On energy units, a quick Australian note. Local food labels show energy in kilojoules (kJ) as the primary unit, with the average adult reference intake set at 8,700 kJ per day.[8] If you are used to thinking in calories, one calorie equals 4.184 kilojoules, so you can divide a kilojoule figure by roughly four to approximate calories.[8] Our food macros guide shows both units side by side for this reason.

06. How to use the guidelines in practice.

The guidelines describe a pattern, not a meal plan, and that is deliberate. They are designed to leave room for the enormous variety of ways people actually eat. A few reference points that make them easier to apply:

• The vegetable target is the one most people underestimate. Five to six serves at 75 grams each is more than it sounds, so it usually needs to be planned rather than left to chance.[5]
• Serves are smaller than portions. A serve is a defined reference amount, not a typical helping. A single dinner plate of vegetables can contain two or three serves, which makes the daily target more achievable than it first appears.[5]
• The guidelines and the macro approach are complementary. The food groups tell you the shape of a healthy diet; tracking macros tells you the quantities. Used together they cover both quality and amount.

The Australian Dietary Guidelines are a genuinely good piece of public health work: clear, moderate and grounded in evidence. For adults over 40, the most useful thing to take from them is not a rule but a direction. Build most of your eating from the five food groups, lean a little harder on protein and calcium than you did when you were younger, treat discretionary foods as occasional, and pay attention to the fact that your energy budget is shrinking while your nutrient needs are not.

If you would like the supporting tools, our free nutrition starter pack bundles the macro tracker, the food guide spreadsheet and an over-40 nutrition guide. It is available when you join the email list on the homepage.