Summary: While the incorporation of healthier fruits and vegetables into diets improved over time, the quality of the diet was offset by the consumption of unhealthy components, such as processed meats and sugar-sweetened beverages.
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On a scale of 0 to 100 of how well people adhere to recommended diets, with 0 being a poor diet (think high intake of sugar and processed meats), and 100 representing the recommended balance of fruits, vegetables, legumes /nuts and whole grains, most countries would score around 40.3.
Globally, this represents a small but significant increase of 1.5 points between 1990 and 2018, researchers at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy report today in the journal. Natural food.
The study, one of the most comprehensive estimates to date of global diet quality, and the first to include findings among children and adults, highlights challenges around the world in promoting healthy eating.
Although global gains were modest, there was notable variation by country, with nutritious options becoming more popular in the United States, Vietnam, China and Iran, and less so in Tanzania, Nigeria and Japan.
“Intake of legumes/nuts and non-starchy vegetables increased over time, but overall improvements in diet quality were offset by higher intakes of unhealthy components such as red/processed meat, sugar-sweetened beverages, and sodium,” he says. the lead author, Victoria Miller. , a visiting scientist at McMaster University in Canada who began this study as a postdoctoral fellow with Dariush Mozaffarian, Dean of Policy and Jean Mayer Professor of Nutrition at the Friedman School, and lead author of the paper.
Dietary quality in detail
Poor diet is one of the leading causes of disease, responsible for 26% of preventable deaths worldwide. While interventions and policies are urgently needed to support healthy eating, little is known about differences in diet quality based on demographics, such as age, gender, education, or proximity to urban areas: useful information to guide public health campaigns.
Miller and colleagues addressed this gap by measuring global, regional, and national dietary patterns among adults and children in 185 countries based on data from more than 1,100 surveys in the Global Dietary Database, a large collaborative compilation of data on consumption levels of food and nutrients around the world. . The researchers’ primary outcome was the 0-100 scale known as the Alternative Healthy Eating Index, a validated measure of diet quality.
At the regional level, the averages ranged from a low of 30.3 in Latin America and the Caribbean to a high of 45.7 in South Asia. The average score of the 185 countries included in the study was 40.3. Only 10 countries, representing less than 1 percent of the world’s population, scored above 50. The highest scoring countries in the world were Vietnam, Iran, Indonesia, and India, and the lowest scores were Brazil, Mexico, the United States. United and Egypt.
Globally, among adults, women were more likely to follow recommended diets than men, and older adults more than younger adults.
“Healthy eating was also influenced by socioeconomic factors, including educational level and urbanity,” says Miller. “Globally and in most regions, more educated adults and children with more educated parents generally had higher overall dietary quality.”
“On average across the world, diet quality was also higher among younger children, but then worsened as children got older,” he adds. “This suggests that early childhood is an important time for intervention strategies to encourage the development of healthy food preferences.”
The researchers note that some study mimics to consider include measurement errors in dietary data, availability of incomplete surveys in some countries, and lack of information on some important dietary considerations, such as trans fat intake. But the findings offer key benchmarks for comparison as new information is added to the Global Dietary Database.
Turn data into policy
The researchers say the scale and detail of the Natural food The study enables nutrition researchers, health agencies and policymakers to better understand trends in dietary intake that can be used to set goals and invest in actions that encourage healthy eating, such as promoting meals made from agricultural products, seafood and vegetable oils.
“We found that both too little healthy food and too much unhealthy food were contributing to global challenges in achieving recommended dietary quality,” says Mozaffarian.
“This suggests that policies that incentivize and reward healthier foods, such as in health care, employer wellness programs, government nutrition programs, and agricultural policies, can have a substantial impact on improving nutrition in the United States and around the world.
Next, the research team plans to estimate how different aspects of poor diets directly contribute to major diseases around the world, as well as model the effects of various policies and programs to improve diets at the global, regional, and national levels.
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original research: Open access.
“The quality of the global diet in 185 countries from 1990 to 2018 shows wide differences by nation, age, education and urbanity” by Victoria Miller et al. Natural food
Summary
The quality of the global diet in 185 countries from 1990 to 2018 shows wide differences by nation, age, education and urbanity
The evidence on what people eat globally is limited in scope and rigor, especially as it relates to children and adolescents. This undermines target setting and investment in evidence-based actions to support healthy and sustainable diets.
Here we quantify global, regional, and national dietary patterns among children and adults, by age group, sex, education, and urbanization, in 185 countries between 1990 and 2018, based on data from the Global Dietary Database project.
Our primary measure was the Alternative Healthy Eating Index, a validated score of diet quality; Dietary approaches to arrest hypertension and Mediterranean diet scoring patterns were assessed secondarily.
The quality of the diet is generally modest throughout the world. In 2018, the mean global Alternative Healthy Eating Index score was 40.3, with a range of 0 (least healthy) to 100 (healthiest), with regional averages ranging from 30.3 in Latin America and the Caribbean up to 45.7 in South Asia. Scores between children and adults were generally similar across regions except Central/Eastern Europe and Central Asia, high-income countries, and the Middle East and North Africa, where children had a lower-quality diet.
Globally, diet quality scores were higher among women versus men, and among more educated versus less educated.
Diet quality increased modestly between 1990 and 2018 globally and in all world regions except South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where it did not improve.
