The food and grocery manufacturing sector pays wages and salaries of $13.56 billion.
The industry’s workforce accounts for about 3 per cent of the population.
The food and grocery manufacturing industry consists of 30,104 businesses.
The industry provides around 24 million nutritious, affordable meals to Australians every day.
312,000 Australians are employed in the food, beverage and manufacturing industries, including half in rural and regional areas.
Australia’s $108 billion food and grocery manufacturing industry is the nation’s largest manufacturing sector.
Industry spends on average 0.5 per cent of turn-over on R&D – about $368 million a year.

Media Centre

Thumbs up for New Year’s diet resolutions

Tuesday, 05 January 2010 14:24

Australians making New Year’s resolutions to lose weight today (January 1) by improving their diets should follow daily intake labels which have been expanded to thousands of products, according to new research by the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC).

The latest industry research found Daily Intake Guide (DIG) front-of-pack labelling – first introduced in Australia in 2007 to help people formulate a balanced diet – is currently on more than 2000 food and beverage products and is used by about 180 leading brands.

AFGC Chief Executive Kate Carnell said the result was a vast improvement from 2007 when DIG was used by major brands on only 58 products.

“Over the past three years, there has been a 3000 per cent increase in the use of DIG thumbnails on supermarket foods. These labels outline the amount of energy, fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt in a standard portion of the food and how that translates to average daily intake,” Ms Carnell said.

Ms Carnell said DIG was ideal for people making New Year’s resolutions to shed kilograms as the first step was to assess their diets, then formulate a daily eating plan according to their individual needs and activity levels.

“DIG is an effective tool for families or individuals as it provides easy-to-understand information to help people make informed and personalised choices to enjoy a balanced diet,” Ms Carnell said.

Ms Carnell said as well as being used by most major brands, DIG was being progressively added to house brand labels by major supermarket chains including Woolworths, Coles and IGA.

“AFGC and its retail partners will soon be rolling out user-friendly consumer education material in retail stores to ensure consumers know how to use the nutritional information to put together a balance diet,” Ms Carnell said.

For more information on the Daily Intake Guide, visit www.mydailyintake.net

-ENDS-

More information: Brad Watts AFGC Media Adviser 0437 379 818.