DIETARY CHANGE AMONG ITALIANS AND AUSTRALIANS IN PERTH

Patterns of dietary change have been assessed in 170 Italians and 170 Australians. 77 percent of Australians and 58 percent of Italians indicated that they had changed their diet at some time; the change being more recent among Australians. The direction of change in nine food groups was assessed. The most striking change was in meat consumption where 68 percent of Italians stated that they had increased while Australians tended to have slightly decreased consumption. Italians had also tended to increase their fat consumption and decrease their consumption of sugar and starch, vegetables, fruit, salt and dairy products. Fat consumption had apparently fallen amongst Australians with 58 percent stating that they had previously eaten more. Reasons for changing diet were categorized into 11 groups. For Italians the most frequently reported reason was migration (60 percent of females 64.3 percent males); whereas a change in household composition was most often mentioned by Australians (42 percent). Health was mentioned as a reason for changing diet by about 25 percent of respondents. Those Italians indicating migration as their major reason for change appeared to have increased their meat and fat intake more than other Italans. The study supports the view that Italian migrants are changing their food consumption patterns towards those of Australians in general. From current theories of the role of diet in chronic disease many of these changes would be considered undesirable. Studies comparing the health of migrants with that of the home and host population assume that migrants make lifestyle changes away from that of the home country toward that of the country of settlement. While this assumption has been tested in some populations (for example Japanese migrants in Hawaii) 1 few data are available from migrants to Australia. Italians are the largest non‐British migrant group in Australia and come from a country in which they way of life is quite different from that of this country. With respect to one aspect of lifestyle, diet, apparent consumption of meat and sugar is reported to be appreciably lower in Italy than Australia and consumption of vegetables, fruit and pulses appreciably higher. Similar, but much smaller dietary differences exist between Italian migrants in Australia and the Australian born population. While this suggests that dietary acculturation has occurred following migration it is also possible that in dietary and other respects, migrants are non‐typical of their home population. It would be desirable therefore to produce more direct evidence of dietary change in the migrant population. In this report we examine retrospectively dietary changes apparently associated with migration and other phenomena in Italian migrants to Australia. These are compared with dietary changes reported by a matched sample of Australian‐born subjects thus permitting a more general analysis of dietary change and the factors influencing it in Australia.