Dietary quality among men and women in 187 countries in 1990 and 2010: a systematic assessment
By F. Imamura, R. Micha, S. Khatibzadeh, S. Fahimi, P. Shi, J. Powles, D. Mozaffarian. Lancet Global Health, 2015
737 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Summary Background Healthy dietary patterns are a global priority to reduce non-communicable diseases. Yet neither worldwide patterns of diets nor their trends with time are well established. We aimed to characterise global changes (or trends) in dietary patterns nationally and regionally and to assess heterogeneity by age, sex, national income, and type of dietary pattern. Methods In this systematic assessment, we evaluated global consumption of key dietary items (foods and nutrients) by region, nation, age, and sex in 1990 and 2010. Consumption data were evaluated from 325 surveys (71·7% nationally representative) covering 88·7% of the global adult population. Two types of dietary pattern were assessed: one reflecting greater consumption of ten healthy dietary items and the other based on lesser consumption of seven unhealthy dietary items. The mean intakes of each dietary factor were divided into quintiles, and each quintile was assigned an ordinal score, with higher scores being equivalent to healthier diets (range 0–100). The dietary patterns were assessed by hierarchical linear regression including country, age, sex, national income, and time as exploratory variables. Findings From 1990 to 2010, diets based on healthy items improved globally (by 2·2 points, 95% uncertainty interval (UI) 0·9 to 3·5), whereas diets based on unhealthy items worsened (−2·5, −3·3 to −1·7). In 2010, the global mean scores were 44·0 (SD 10·5) for the healthy pattern and 52·1 (18·6) for the unhealthy pattern, with weak intercorrelation (r=–0·08) between countries. On average, better diets were seen in older adults compared with younger adults, and in women compared with men (p<0·0001 each). Compared with low-income nations, high-income nations had better diets based on healthy items (+2·5 points, 95% UI 0·3 to 4·1), but substantially poorer diets based on unhealthy items (−33·0, −37·8 to −28·3). Diets and their trends were very heterogeneous across the world regions. For example, both types of dietary patterns improved in high-income countries, but worsened in some low-income countries in Africa and Asia. Middle-income countries showed the largest improvement in dietary patterns based on healthy items, but the largest deterioration in dietary patterns based on unhealthy items. Interpretation Consumption of healthy items improved, while consumption of unhealthy items worsened across the world, with heterogeneity across regions and countries. These global data provide the best estimates to date of nutrition transitions across the world and inform policies and priorities for reducing the health and economic burdens of poor diet quality. Funding The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Medical Research Council.
Subfields: Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5f5c1b80f97ecd6ef63586c1c01e5ee820acfe32
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Citations in the corpus
- Dietary and Policy Priorities for Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, and Obesity – A Comprehensive Review (2016, neutral): “In recent years, global dietary patterns have shifted in nearly every nation in the world.(4) At the same time, nutrition science has advanced remarkably.”
- Anti-Inflammatory and Immunomodulatory Effects of Probiotics in Gut Inflammation: A Door to the Body (2021, background): “Among western lifestyle, the main contribution is the adherence to western-type diets (WDs) progressively expanded to low-income nations, with a concurrent increase in ICDs in areas of the planet where these diseases were rare (41, 42).”
- Healthy and Sustainable Diets and Food Systems: the Key to Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2? (2019, background): “…fish high in omega-3 fatty acids, and polyunsaturated fatty acids, and diets high in red meat, processed meat (smoked, cured, salted or chemically preserved), sugar-sweetened beverages, trans fats and sodium (Forouzanfar et al., 2015; Imamura et al. 2015; Lawrence et al. 2019; Willett et al. 2019).”