Abstract
Evidence on what people eat globally is limited in scope and rigour, especially as it relates to children and adolescents. This impairs target setting and investment in evidence-based actions to support healthy sustainable diets. Here we quantified global, regional and national dietary patterns among children and adults, by age group, sex, education and urbanicity, across 185 countries between 1990 and 2018, on the basis of data from the Global Dietary Database project. Our primary measure was the Alternative Healthy Eating Index, a validated score of diet quality; Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension and Mediterranean Diet Score patterns were secondarily assessed. Dietary quality is generally modest worldwide. In 2018, the mean global Alternative Healthy Eating Index score was 40.3, ranging from 0 (least healthy) to 100 (most healthy), with regional means ranging from 30.3 in Latin America and the Caribbean to 45.7 in South Asia. Scores among children versus adults were generally similar across regions, except in Central/Eastern Europe and Central Asia, high-income countries, and the Middle East and Northern Africa, where children had lower diet quality. Globally, diet quality scores were higher among women versus men, and more versus less educated individuals. Diet quality increased modestly between 1990 and 2018 globally and in all world regions except in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, where it did not improve.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 694-702 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Nature Food |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| Early online date | 19 Sept 2022 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Sept 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Acknowledgements:We thank R. Micha for her work harmonizing the individual dietary surveys included in the GDD. We thank the GDD corresponding members for sharing and harmonizing their dietary surveys in accordance with the GDD methods. This study was supported by grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (OPP1176681; D.M.) and from the American Heart Association (20POST35200069; V.M.). The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributed to study design during the grant application process; the funders otherwise had no role in data collection, data analysis, data interpretation or writing of the report.
Funding Information:
V.M. reports research funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, outside the submitted work. P.W. reports research grants and contracts from the United States Agency for International Development and personal fees from the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition, outside the submitted work. J.R., J.Z. and P.S. report research funding from Nestlé, outside the submitted work. J.C. reports research funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development, and personal fees from UNICEF/WHO, outside the submitted work. D.M. reports research funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; personal fees from GOED, Bunge, Indigo Agriculture, Motif FoodWorks, Amarin, Acasti Pharma, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, America’s Test Kitchen and Danone; scientific advisory board member for Brightseed, DayTwo, Elysium Health, Filtricine, HumanCo and Tiny Organics; and chapter royalties from UpToDate, all outside the submitted work. The other authors have no disclosures to declare.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).
Author Correction: Global dietary quality in 185 countries from 1990 to 2018 show wide differences by nation, age, education, and urbanicity (Nature Food, (2022), 3, 9, (694-702), 10.1038/s43016-022-00594-9)
Victoria Miller, Patrick Webb, Frederick Cudhea, Peilin Shi, Jianyi Zhang, Julia Reedy, Josh Erndt-Marino, Jennifer Coates, Dariush Mozaffarian, Murat Bas, Jemal Haidar Ali, Suhad Abumweis, Anand Krishnan, Puneet Misra, Nahla Chawkat Hwalla, Chandrashekar Janakiram, Nur Indrawaty Liputo, Abdulrahman Musaiger, Farhad Pourfarzi, Iftikhar Alam, 2023, vol. 4, issue 2, p. 191. Nature Food http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43016-023-00705-0
Data Availability Statement
Data availabilityThe modelled estimates of individual food and nutrient intakes by population subgroup, country, region and globe in 1990 and 2018 are available for download from the GDD (https://www.globaldietarydatabase.org/). Survey-level information and original data download weblinks are also provided for all public surveys; survey-level microdata or stratum-level aggregate data are provided for direct download for all non-public surveys granted consent for public sharing by the data owner. The modelled dietary quality scores are available for download from (https://github.com/victoriaemiller/GDD-Diet-Quality).
Code Availability
The statistical coding is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Extended data is available for this paper at https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00594-9.
Supplementary information
The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00594-9
Access to Document
- Miller_etal_NF_Global_Dietary_Quality_VoR
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