Consumption of healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables improved worldwide over the two decades ending in 2010, but “intake of unhealthy foods including processed meat and sweetened drinks” rose more rapidly, according to a study published in the journal Lancet Global Health. Diet quality improved in the most in wealthy countries, but “some countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia … have seen no improvement in diet over the past 20 years,” said the Lancet, citing China and India as nations with no overall improvement. Older people and women tended to have better diets on average.
“There is a particularly urgent need to focus on improving diet quality among poorer populations. If we do nothing, undernutrition will be rapidly eclipsed by obesity and non-communicable diseases, as is already being seen in India, China, and other middle-income countries,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, senior author of the paper and dean of nutrition at Tufts. Non-communicable diseases reviewed in the study included cardiovascular disease, diabetes and diet-related cancers.
The study examined data for 187 countries with a total population of 4.5 billion. Diet patterns vary widely, the study noted. Fumiaki Imamura of Cambridge, who led the study, pointed to projections that non-communicable diseases will account for a large share of deaths in the near future. Imamura called for research “to understand different, multiple causes of these trends, such as agricultural, food industry, and health policy.”