Dietary habits around the world – the best and the worst

#healthyfood #unhealthyfood #junkfood A study of the dietary habits of the world has revealed that people in Chad and Sierra Leone, in Africa, have the best diets because they consume plenty of fruit, vegetables, nuts and whole grains while the Belgians love their chocolate and waffles, and the Hungarians their rich goulash, they are the worst. This has been reported in dailymail.co.uk dated 19 February 2015.
The result of the study conducted by Dr Fumiaki Imamura, of the University of Cambridge, has been published in The Lancet Global health journal and the study has assessed the quality of diet in 197 countries, covering almost 4.5 billion adults, 90 per cent of the global population.
In general, the study has found that there is a rise in consumption of fruit and vegetables worldwide probably due to various awareness campaigns but, this rise was offset by an increase in the consumption of junk food.
The observation is that people who live in many of the wealthiest regions like the U.S. and Canada, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand even now have some of the worst quality diets in the world. The reason is because they have some of the highest consumption of unhealthy food worldwide.
However, some countries in sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia – like China and India - have seen no improvement in the quality of their diet over the past 20 years.
The study has identified 10 healthy food items as fruit, vegetables, beans and legumes, nuts and seeds, whole grains, milk, total polyunsaturated fatty acids, fish, omega-3s, and dietary fiber. Simultaneously, they have also identified an unfavorable diet that is based on seven unhealthy items namely - unprocessed meats, processed meats, sugar-sweetened drinks, saturated fat, trans fat, dietary cholesterol, and salt.