The 2016 CSIRO Healthy Diet Score report, released this week, places Tasmania slightly ahead of the Northern Territory in their consumption of ‘discretionary foods’, like sweets, chocolates and alcohol. 

The average weekly consumption of junk food in Tasmania is 20.5 serves, the Northern Territory follows closely with 20.3 serves. 

The worst offending items are alcohol and chocolate and confectionary. 

The study found that nationally Australian’s have a worse diet than originally thought, with a healthy food score of 59 out of 100. A healthy score is 70 or above. 

Tasmania scrapes in at the bottom of the nation with a score of 57. 

The report suggested the age and occupation profile of the states could be the cause of the difference in diet. 

University of Tasmania senior lecturer and researcher Dr Benjamin Schüz thinks education and socioeconomic factors are key in dietary choices. 

“One really interesting thing when you look at eating behaviour is that it is very much subject to a social gradient,” he said. 

Dr Schüz said people with higher education levels and higher incomes tend to eat healthier foods. 

“On the other end that you find that those discretionary food choices are more prevalent in people with lower education and lower income,” he said. 

“I would say that part of the finding that the diet score is the worst in Tasmania has to do with that socioeconomic gradient.”

Dr Schüz thinks there are many factors in people’s food choices, and access to healthy options is also a key problem. 

“If you go beyond the urban centres in Tasmania you find that it is increasingly difficult to get shops that have a wide stock of really healthy food options available,” he said. 

Education is the key to improving dietary choices according to Dr Schüz. He thinks the more children are exposed to healthy meals the better their dietary outcomes. 

“We can improve diets by teaching kids to eat healthier and that’s … certainly not only in schools but it’s also to do with what they're being exposed to at home,” he said. 

“If children are exposed to those kinds of home cooked, more healthy, less process meals then the more they will develop a taste for for that kind of stuff.”