If your supermarket trolley has over time morphed into one carrying organic and cruelty-free meats, sugar substitutes and plant-based milks, it's reflective of Australians' latest food preferences.
A new study on our shopping habits by market research firm Ipsos has found we're increasingly avoiding artificial sweeteners, sugary foods and drinks, and fatty meats and dairy products.
It also found we were opting for "natural sugar substitutes" such as honey, ethically produced meats such as no-added hormone beef, organic chicken and stall-free pork, and plant-based milk, such as soy, rice and almond.
While it seems Australians are responding to the message about reducing sugar intake, Dr Kieron Rooney, a nutrition expert at Sydney University, said it was worrying that some people thought "natural" sweeteners were healthy alternatives.
"The scientific evidence about damage caused by added sugar isn't about just the white sugar cube we may add to our drink. It's all the types, like honey," he said.
"This may be difficult, but the long-term goal for the individual is to wean themselves off the dependency on sweet foods processed with lots of added sugar."
The latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows more than half of all Australians are exceeding World Health Organisation's recommendations to consume fewer than 13 teaspoons of sugar a day. This includes honey and sugar naturally present in fruit juice.
Up to 500,000 Australians have undiagnosed type 2 diabetes. Another 2 million are on the cusp of developing the potentially deadly disease, according to a recent study published in The Lancet.
Danielle Soutar, a sales representative from Randwick, said her food choices changed with the birth of her daughters Noa, aged 4, and Harper, aged 2.
She said the Ipsos lists of what foods we were eating more and less of were "spot on" when it came to her family's diet.
"It's very much how we eat. We don't do artificial sweeteners or soft drinks, because they're full of sugar and colours and I've seen how it affects my kids – hyperactivity and bad behaviour," she said.
"We definitely try to avoid hormones in any of our meat and I do try to get organic meat when I can. I drink soy milk but the rest of my family are cow milk drinkers."
Following artificial sweeteners and sugar from beverages, the research showed the third most avoided ingredient was sugar from breakfast cereals.
Gina Levy, senior nutrition manager at cereal giant Kellogg, said as the company innovated and reformulated products, they were trying to bring the level of sugar down.
For example, last year Kellogg's relaunched the "new and improved" Nutri-grain cereal with 17 per cent less sugar, achieving a four health star rating.
"No one's going to argue that sugar adds to the taste. There are other factors like crisping factor, texture, and microbial safety, and these are things we have to consider when we add sugars," she said.
"If you look at the Australian Health Survey and you look at what's contributing to sugar intake in Australians, cereal comes out pretty low. Total sugar, we got 3 per cent, and added sugar, 2.9 per cent."
The Ipsos report also shows fad diets aren't having as much impact as expected, considering widespread media coverage.
While the paleo diet – inspired by how early humans may have eaten – achieve the highest awareness at 47 per cent, only 3 per cent of respondents said they had tried it.
"That was what I was most surprised to see. That despite all the diet fads, not many people had tried it," said Kathy Benson, research director at Ipsos.
The study found our top food priorities for 2016 were eating more fresh fruit and vegetables, smaller portion sizes, and reducing sugar intake.
But Dr Rooney said for the first, we should swap the terms around to say "vegetables and fruit", because it was likely we weren't chowing down enough vegetables.
"Fruit is OK, but we need to remember that it is two serves of fruit and five serves of veggies that are recommended and this data would suggest we are doing the opposite," he said.
"If you are already hitting your fruit target by mid-morning then replacing some of those pastries and bread based snacks and confectionary with some vegetables for snacking is a far better prospect for health."
