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A new study shows that diets around the world have improved
slightly over the past 30 years.
On a scale of 0 to 100, most countries score around 40.
3, with 0 representing a poor diet (such as high sugar and processed meats) and 100 representing the recommended balance
of fruits, vegetables, legumes/nuts, and whole grains.
A recent study published in the journal Nature Food by researchers from Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutritional Sciences and Policy shows that globally, that means a modest but significant increase
of 1.
5 percentage points from 1990 to 2018.
The study, one of the most thorough assessments of the quality of the world's diets to date and the first to include findings in children and adults, highlights the difficulties
governments around the world face in promoting healthy diets.
Despite modest global progress, regional disparities are significant, with healthy foods growing in popularity in the United States, Vietnam, China and Iran, while declining in Tanzania, Nigeria and Japan
.
"Intake of legumes/nuts and non-starchy vegetables increased over time, but the overall improvement in diet quality was offset by increased intake of unhealthy ingredients such as red/processed meat, sugary drinks, and sodium
.
" Lead author Victoria Miller, a visiting scientist at McMaster University in Canada, a postdoctoral scholar who began the study under Jean Mayer, dean of the Friedman School School of Policy and professor of nutrition, and senior author
of the paper.
Poor diet is a major cause of disease, accounting for 26%
of avoidable deaths worldwide.
Despite the urgent need for interventions and policies to promote healthy diets, little is known about how dietary quality changes by demographic factors such as age, gender, educational attainment and proximity to urban areas, which can be used to better target public health campaigns
.
To close this gap, Miller and his colleagues used information
from more than 1,100 surveys from the Global Dietary Database.
The Global Diets Database is a large, collaborative collection of data on food and nutrition consumption levels around the world, measuring global, regional and national dietary patterns
for adults and children in 185 countries.
The study's primary outcome was the Alternative Health Eating Index, a validated measure of diet quality on a scale of 0-100
.
Regionally, the average is as low as 30.
3 in Latin America and the Caribbean and as high as 45.
7
in South Asia.
The 185 countries that participated in the study scored an average of 40.
3 points
.
Only 10 countries, which account for less than 1 per cent of the world's population, scored above 50 points
.
The highest-scoring countries in the world are Vietnam, Iran, Indonesia and India, while the lowest-scoring countries are Brazil, Mexico, the United States and Egypt
.
Globally, among adults, women are more likely than men to eat the recommended diet, and older people are more likely than young people to eat the recommended diet
.
"Healthy eating is also influenced by socioeconomic factors, including education levels and urbanization," Miller said
.
"Globally, and in most regions, children of more educated adults and more educated parents have higher
overall diets.
"
"Around the world, on average, younger children eat better, but the quality of their diets deteriorates
as they age," she added.
"This suggests that early childhood is an important time
to adopt intervention strategies to encourage the development of healthy food preferences.
"
The researchers note that the study has some limitations, taking into account measurement errors in dietary data, incomplete surveys in some countries, and lack of information on important dietary considerations, such as trans fat intake
.
But as new information is added to the Global Dietary Database, the findings provide a key benchmark
for comparison.
The scale and detail of the Natural Food study allows nutrition researchers, health agencies and policymakers to better understand trends in dietary intake, which can be used to set targets and invest in actions that encourage healthy eatings, such as promoting diets
consisting of produce, seafood and vegetable oils, the researchers said.
"We find that too little healthy food and too much unhealthy food contribute to
the global challenge of achieving recommended dietary quality," Mozaffarian said.
"This suggests that policies that encourage and reward more healthy foods, such as health care, employer health programs, government nutrition programs, and agricultural policies, can have a significant impact
on improving nutrition in the United States and around the world.
"
The research team's next steps are to assess how different aspects of poor diets directly contribute to major diseases around the world and model
the impact of various policies and programs to improve global, regional and national diets.
References:
“Global dietary quality in 185 countries from 1990 to 2018 show wide differences by nation, age, education, and urbanicity” by Victoria Miller, Patrick Webb, Frederick Cudhea, Peilin Shi, Jianyi Zhang, Julia Reedy, Josh Erndt-Marino, Jennifer Coates and Dariush Mozaffarian, 19 September 2022,Nature Food.
DOI: 10.
1038/s43016-022-00594-9
