Global ‘diet quality’ falling, despite the rise of healthy foods

By Nathan Gray

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Nutrition Snack

Consumption of unhealthy foods has outpaced beneficial dietary changes on a global scale say researchers.
Consumption of unhealthy foods has outpaced beneficial dietary changes on a global scale say researchers.
Overall diet quality worsened across the world even as consumption of healthier foods increased in many countries, according to a new global report of dietary patterns.

The first-of-its-kind analysis of international dietary patterns compared trends in intakes of healthy versus unhealthy foods in 187 countries between 1990 and 2010, finding major differences by country and drawing the conclusion that overall diet quality worsened across the world even as consumption of healthier foods increased in many countries.

Overall, increases in the consumption of unhealthy foods outpaced beneficial dietary changes, especially in middle-income nations, said the research team, writing in The Lancet Global Health.

Led by senior author Dr Dariush Mozaffarian from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, the research team said that the findings show that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution to improving diets internationally.

"While it's encouraging to see some improvement in parts of the world, we still have a long way to go," ​said Mozaffarian. "With this analysis, we're supplying data that support longtime speculation that, globally, our diets are getting worse.”

“We also show that these changes in dietary patterns vary significantly by country: in some countries, lack of healthy foods is the biggest problem; in others, excess unhealthy foods; and in others, such as the United States, it's both. This tells us there is no one-size-fits-all approach to improving global diets."

Global analysis

The research team, led by scientists at Tufts and the University of Cambridge and backed by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and UK Medical Research Council (MRC), reviewed 325 dietary surveys, representing almost 90% of the world's adult population, focusing on 17 common foods, drinks and nutrients.

The analysis included healthier options such as whole grains, fish, fruits and vegetables, and polyunsaturated fat, and unhealthy options such as sodium, cholesterol, processed meat, and sugar-sweetened beverages.

Overall, the team reported that older adults tended to have better quality diets than younger adults, and women tended to eat healthier than men.

dietchanges
Changes in dietary patterns from 1990 to 2010 in 187 countries. Source: The Lancet Global Health.

However, the team also found important relationships between country income and diet quality – noting an increase in consumption of healthy foods and nutrients in high and middle-income countries, but little increase in low-income countries.

"At the same time, we saw an even stronger association between national incomes and unhealthy diet patterns,"​ said first author Fumiaki Imamura from the MRC Epidemiology Unit 0 based at the University of Cambridge.

"In other words, people in high income countries, and increasingly middle income countries, are among the biggest consumers of unhealthy foods."

In addition, the authors saw no increase in consumption of healthier food items in the world's poorest regions.

"The lack of improvement in areas like Sub Saharan Africa and the Andean States of Latin America underlines the urgent need to address diet quality in the poorest nations, where rises in obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases are joining undernutrition and nutrient deficiencies as health problems,"​ said Imamura.

"If we don't step up efforts to improve the current food supply, we could see the same turn toward nutrient-poor, processed foods as we've seen in China, India and other middle income countries where we saw the largest increases in consumption of unhealthy foods."

Mozaffarian said these findings from the study can be used to inform policies and prevention efforts aimed at improving dietary patterns to reduce the healthcare costs and other burdens of poor quality diets.

Source: The Lancet Global Health
Volume 3, Issue 3, March 2015, Pages e132–e142, doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(14)70381-X
“Dietary quality among men and women in 187 countries in 1990 and 2010: a systematic assessment"
Authors: Fumiaki Imamura, et al

Related news

Show more

1 comment

Hidden agenda

Posted by Julie Vincent,

Hmmm....I think with this study backed by Bill and Linda Gates that there may be a hidden agenda to this study,that is the promotion of GMO grown foods through out the world!.....financially lucrative to them and the companies they support but devastating for human health and organic safe farming. practices.

Report abuse

Follow us

Products

View more

Webinars