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Fitness & Health

04th Apr 2019

One in five deaths worldwide are linked to bad diet, study finds

Rudi Kinsella

bad diet

11 million deaths worldwide in 2017 were linked to people having poor diets.

People in almost every region of the world could benefit from changing their diets to ensure they eat the optimal amounts of various foods and nutrients, according to the Global Burden of Disease study.

The study tracked trends in consumption of 15 dietary factors from 1990 to 2017 in a total of 195 countries.

It found that, in total, one in five deaths worldwide are linked to people having diets that are high in sugar, salt and processed meat.

The causes of these deaths in 2017 included 10 million deaths from cardiovascular disease, 913,000 deaths from cancer, and almost 339,000 deaths from type 2 diabetes.

Deaths related to diet have increased from eight million in 1990, but this is largely due to the rising population.

Chris Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, who led the study, claimed that the findings confirmed what people had believed for many years.

“Poor diet is responsible for more deaths than any other risk factor in the world,” he said.

“Our assessment suggests the leading dietary risk factors are high intake of sodium, or low intake of healthy foods, such as whole grains, fruit, nuts and seeds and vegetables.”

Healthy eating guidelines for Irish people were released by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland just over two months ago, which you can read more about here.

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diet,Sensitive