One in five deaths globally are linked to poor diet, experts said yesterday, warning that overconsumption of sugar, salt and meat was killing millions of people every year.
The UN has estimated that nearly 1 billion people worldwide are malnourished, while nearly 2 billion are “overnourished.”
However, the latest study on global diet trends, published in The Lancet medical journal, showed that in nearly every one of the 195 countries surveyed, people were also eating too much of the wrong types of food — and consuming worryingly low levels of healthier produce.
For example, the world on average consumes more than 10 times the recommended amount of sugar-sweetened beverages and 86 percent more sodium per person than is considered safe.
The study, which examined consumption and disease trends from 1990 to 2017, said that too many people were eating far too few whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Of 11 million deaths attributed to poor diet, the largest killer was cardiovascular disease, which is often caused or worsened by obesity.
“This study affirms what many have thought for several years — that poor diet is responsible for more deaths than any other risk factor in the world,” said study author Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
“Our assessment suggests the leading dietary risk factors are high intake of sodium, or low intake of health foods,” he said.
The report highlighted large variation in diet-related deaths between nations, with the highest-risk country, Uzbekistan, having 10 times the food-based mortality rate of the lowest-risk, Israel.
In January, a consortium of researchers called for a dramatic shift in the way the world eats.
An EAT-Lancet report said that the global population must eat about half as much red meat and sugar, and twice as many vegetables, fruits and nuts in order to avert a worldwide obesity epidemic and avoid “catastrophic” climate change.
Murray’s team said that economic inequality was a factor in poor dietary choices in many countries, saying that on average, reaching the “five-a-day” fruit and vegetable servings advocated by doctors cost just 2 percent of household income in rich nations, but more than a half of household income in poorer ones.
“This study gives us good evidence of what to target to improve diets, and therefore health, at the global and national level,” said Warwick Medical School associate professor Oyinlola Oyebode, who was not involved in the research. “The lack of fruit, vegetables and whole grains in diets across the world are very important — but the other dietary factor highlighted by this study is the high intake of sodium.”
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