As a result of a large-scale study conducted in 2019, it is seen that an unhealthy diet causes more deaths than even smoking. In the same study, it was even determined that industrial nutrition is responsible for 11 million deaths every year in the world. In fact, this research says we shouldn’t understand malnutrition as just eating junk food. Because researchers warn us that we are as responsible for what we do not eat as we do for what we eat.
The researchers state that there should be a variety of global nutrition policies focused on consuming foods that fall into the healthy category, such as fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts. In other words, although foods containing trans fats are harmful, not including healthy foods in your diet is just as harmful. Let’s take a look at this issue together.
Industrial food consumption is even the cause of death from heart attack and stroke.
The study, published in The Lancet Medicine, analyzed the diets of people in 195 countries and found that malnutrition is a risk factor for death from diseases such as heart disease, certain types of cancer and diabetes.
In fact, when the global rate of deaths from risk factors such as smoking and drug use is calculated in this study, it was found to be interestingly lower than malnutrition. Ashkan Afshin, a researcher at the University of Washington, states that as a result of these data, unhealthy diet is more decisive in terms of causing diseases than smoking and its equivalents.
In this case, eating better and healthier could prevent one out of every five deaths in the world.
In the study, it is stated that consuming too little fruit, vegetables and too much salt is responsible for half of the deaths in the world. Ashkan Afshin, on the other hand, criticizes this finding, saying that when people increase their consumption of one food, they reduce their consumption of other nutrients.
In other words, you are essentially making a mistake by giving up fruits and vegetables just because you have increased your salt consumption. Afshin states that among the countries examined in the study, such as Lebanon, Israel and Iran are in better condition than other countries because they follow the Mediterranean diet. If you ask how the Mediterranean diet is, we can say that it is a diet that mainly includes fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes.
Of course, since the countries that follow the Mediterranean diet have different consumption habits within themselves, we should not think of these countries as the best countries in terms of healthy nutrition, based on Afshin’s sentences.
In fact, the important thing is to consume every nutrient in a balanced way.
In the aforementioned research, 15 different foods were examined and some were not found to be beneficial for human health. For example, high consumption of red and processed meat, low consumption of dairy products and low consumption of fiber foods are risk factors for health.
When we look at the death rates from nutrition, we see that Israel has the lowest mortality rate. It is followed by France, Spain and Japan. The UK ranks 23rd for diet-related deaths, the US ranks 43rd and Uzbekistan last. Based on these death rates, Dr. Christopher Murray states that malnutrition may be more responsible for death than other risk factors. As a result, it is possible to say that the discussions on the need to encourage the production, distribution and consumption of healthy foods in all nations in the last 20 years need to turn into more concrete steps.
Sources: The Lancet, The Guardian
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