Recent health studies have determined that foods we allow to enter our system pave the way for either sickness or health, yet for many Australians the options seem to have been narrowed down the economy.

The current staples, according to the latest Australian Dietary Guidelines released on Monday, mainly consist of energy-packed foods sorely lacking in necessary nutrients but full of sweets that bloat the body.

"What we know from international literature is that foods that have added sugar, salt and fat are the ones that are higher in calories and energy and they tend to be the cheapest option in the Australian diet at the moment," according to Guidelines working committee chair Amanda Lee.

At the same time, Lee admitted that for most Australians struggling to stretch their budgets, choosing cheap "energy foods" seems expedient and overtakes health concerns.

As a result, "there are plenty of people currently in the queue for treatment of conditions which are completely preventable by improving their diet," Lee told News.com.au.

Along with releasing the new diet suggestions, the National Health and Medical Research Council reported that more than half of Australian adults currently deal with obesity while one out of four youngsters - the cluster lumps kids and teenagers together - face the same problems.

That data, the NHMRC added, is linked to questionable eating habits prevalent among 35 percent of adult Aussies and 41 percent of children.

Offering sensible answers to the existing dietary concerns of Australians, Lee said, entails a two-pronged approach - to press on the importance of nutritious diets while making healthy foods more affordable to the public.

The notion of "you are what you eat" in today's case is actually superseded by "your pocket dictates what you eat," Lee stressed.

It also helps, Lee added, if Australians will pick up more skills in grasping the nutritional information that food products carry when they hit market shelves as she stressed that the information means nothing if most failed to understand it.

Health experts said too few are aware that energy-laden foods such as soft drink, fried foods, many takeaway foods, cakes, biscuits, chips and chocolates are easiest tickets to become overweight or obese, which in turn opens up the wide door for the onset of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and high blood pressure.

At present, obesity has been identified as the main culprit of the 56 percent of all recorded deaths in the country, which at the same time used up $8 billion of government funds to cover for health care costs.

Lee believes that a little more effort from the government and greater knowledge among Australians would gradually ease these costly pressures as she pointed out that as much as $55 million will be saved yearly if only every one of us take one more fruit each day.