Global ‘diet quality’ falling despite so many health foods.

1. Global ‘diet quality’ falling, despite
the rise of healthy foods
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By Nathan Gray+
24-Feb-2015
Lastupdated on 24-Feb-2015 at 14:07 GMT
Consumption of unhealthy foods has outpaced beneficial dietary changes on a global
scale say researchers.
Related tags: Diet, Unhealthy food, Healthy food, Dietary
patterns, Functional foods,Malnutrition, Obesity
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

2. 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.

3. 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

4. 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