Foods like cake that are low on the essentials we need in food to stay healthy, are called ‘discretionary foods’ in the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating.

This is because some of us (not many!), who aren’t overweight and a bit taller or more active actually have a few spare kilojoules in their day over and above what they need for just the core foods. Ideally one would spend the extra kilojoules on more core foods full of goodies like fibre and antioxidants, but there’s no problem in spending at least some of them on extra ‘empty’ kilojoules, as long as you pay attention to serve sizes.

When the ADTHE is thinking about ‘discretionary foods’ it’s thinking 1 or 2 ‘small’ serves…surprisingly small serves.

One ‘discretionary’ serve only has about 600 kilojoules so that’s

….. ¼ of a caramel slice from the bakery……

….2 large squares of chocolate…

… 1 mini-muffin……

…or two medium apples….

…so yes, some people can have their cake and eat it too….but only a small slice.