Unhealthy diets can be the deadliest in the world

WEDNESDAY, April 3, 2019 (HealthDay News) – Bad diets are reducing the number of lives worldwide – causing the death of more people worldwide than smoking or high blood pressure, according to a new recent study.

The study, conducted in nearly 200 countries, has linked poor food quality and nearly 11 million deaths worldwide in 2017. This translates to 22 percent deaths among all adults that year.

Previous research has linked tobacco use to 8 million deaths worldwide and high blood pressure to just over 10 million deaths.

But it is not surprising that diet is so critical, said Dr. Ashkan Afshin, senior researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Poor nutrition helps drive many diseases, from high blood pressure to type 2 diabetes, he noted.

And it's not just about people who consume too much junk food, which is common in rich countries like the United States.

"We often talk about" bad "foods and what you should not eat," said Afshin. "But that's also what you should eat."

The badysis highlighted some particularly strong dietary habits with higher mortality rates: high sodium diets, low whole grain diets, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds.

Afshin stated that, fundamentally, all of these principles are consistent with diet recommendations: eat fewer processed foods and more "whole plant" foods.

That's the end result, concluded Dr. Andrew Freeman, director of cardiovascular prevention and wellness at National Jewish Health in Denver.

"People are missing a lot of their diet," he said. "If you include more whole plant foods, it will eliminate some of the bad things."

Freeman, who did not participate in the study, recently led a research study on certain "diet" diets – some foods presented as having beneficial effects for the heart.

The conclusion? The best evidence does not support miracle foods, but a global diet rich in fruits and vegetables, legumes and nuts and in whole grains rich in fiber.

For the new study, the Afshin team used published nutrition surveys to examine typical dietary intakes in 195 countries, as well as published research on the relationship between various factors related to diet and the risks of illness.

For example, to estimate the impact of salted diets, researchers examined available data on sodium levels in urine and blood pressure changes, and then estimated the relationship between these blood pressure changes and blood pressure. evolution of the disease.

It is no surprise that the typical diet varies from one region to another: in the United States and Canada, people tend to eat the most processed meats and trans fat from packaged foods, example.

But researchers noted that the consumption of sugary drinks and sodium was too high in almost every region of the world.

At the same time, healthy foods have almost all been traded, with a few exceptions: Central Asian residents tend to eat enough vegetables, while in some parts of Latin America, Africa and Asia from the South, legumes are usually rich.

Overall, however, unbalanced diets posed a threat to health everywhere. Oceania and East Asia, for example, had the highest proportion of "diet-related" deaths due to heart disease. Food-related deaths due to type 2 diabetes complications were highest in the United States and Canada.

According to Afshin, the impact of diet on mortality rates, but also on the quality of life.

In 2017, an unhealthy diet was badociated with 255 million disability-adjusted life years – a summary of the total years of life lost, plus time spent with a disability.

The results were published on April 3 in The lancet newspaper.

For Freeman, all this underscores the considerable impact of food choices on the longevity and well-being of people. "I do not know how many alarms we need before we start making changes," he said.

Freeman and Afshin, however, said, "Society as a whole, including health systems and policy makers, needs to promote healthy, whole foods over processed foods, red meat and butter.

It's never too late to make sensible diet changes – and Freeman said patients are often motivated to "stop taking pills" to manage conditions such as high blood pressure.

But ideally, he noted, people should not wait for diseases to develop.

More information

The American Heart Association has advice on healthy eating.