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poor diet

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A recent analysis, published in Lancet, found that people’s daily diet is a bigger killer than smoking and is now involved in one in five deaths around the world.

According to the study, salt – whether in bread, soy sauce or processed meals – shortened the highest number of lives.

Researchers say this study is not about obesity, but “poor quality” diets damaging hearts and causing cancer.

An influential study shows that the food we eat is putting 11 million of us into an early grave each year.

The Global Burden of Disease Study is the most authoritative assessment of how people are dying in every country in the world.

The latest analysis used estimates of countries’ eating habits to pin down how often diet was shortening lives.

The dangerous diets were those containing:

  1. Too much salt – 3 million deaths
  2. Too few whole grains – 3 million deaths
  3. Too little fruit – 2 million deaths

According to the study results, low levels of nuts, seeds, vegetables, omega-3 from seafood and fiber were the other major killers.

Salt

About 10 million out of the 11 million diet-related deaths were because of cardiovascular disease and that explains why salt is such a problem.

Too much salt raises blood pressure and that in turn raises the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Salt can also have a direct effect on the heart and blood vessels, leading to heart failure when the organ does not work effectively.

Japan and China have curiously contrasting fortunes that reflect their changing relationship with salt.

China consumes enormous amounts of salt with soy and other salty sauces being a key part of the country’s cuisine.

The rising popularity of processed foods is introducing yet more salt to their diet. It has the highest death rate because of salt of any country.

Bad diets

Whole grains, fruit and vegetables have the opposite effect – they are “cardioprotective” and lower the risk of heart problems.

Cancers and type 2 diabetes made up the rest of the diet-related deaths.

No country is perfect and each favors some part of a healthy diet more than others, but this is how far the world is from an optimal diet.

Why adding extra antioxidants to our diet gives no benefit?

Five reasons you’re tired all the time

According to the study, the healthy foods missing from the most diets around the world were nuts and seeds.

The huge fat versus sugar debate and the link between red and processed meats with cancer have attracted huge headlines in recent years.

Although, the study did show too many fizzy drinks were being drunk in every corner of the world.

The researchers say it is time for health campaigns to switch from talking about nutrients like fat and sugar and instead promote healthy foods.

Bad diets are knocking a couple of years off life expectancies around the world, according to the researchers.

Mediterranean countries, particularly France, Spain and Israel, have some of the lowest numbers of diet-related deaths in the world.

Countries in South East, Southern and Central Asia are at the opposite end of the spectrum.

  • Israel has the lowest diet-related deaths – 89 per 100,000 people a year
  • Uzbekistan has the highest diet-related deaths – 892 per 100,000 people a year

Many reports claimed that North Koreans are a few inches shorter than their counterparts south of the border.

Is that true?

North Korea’s recent failure to launch a long-range rocket was embarrassing for its new leader, Kim Jong-Un. It was supposed to be a symbol of progress.

Renewed media interest in North Korea since Kim Jong-Un replaced his father has prompted the re-emergence of a claim which appears to be a symbol not of progress, but of relative decline: that North Koreans are much shorter than South Koreans.

The Independent reported last week that “nothing is small in North Korea apart from the people, who are on average three inches shorter than their cousins in the South”.

This statistic, or versions of it, have been quoted for some time. In 2010 the late Christopher Hitchens put the difference at six inches in an article in Slate titled A Nation of Racist Dwarfs.

Senator John McCain referred to a three-inch gap in a 2008 presidential debate.

So what’s the truth? Professor Daniel Schwekendiek from Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul has studied the heights of North Korean refugees measured when they crossed the border into South Korea.

He says North Korean men are, on average, between 3 – 8 cm (1.2 – 3.1in) shorter than their South Korean counterparts.

The Independent reported last week that "nothing is small in North Korea apart from the people, who are on average three inches shorter than their cousins in the South"

The Independent reported last week that "nothing is small in North Korea apart from the people, who are on average three inches shorter than their cousins in the South"

A difference is also obvious between North and South Korean children.

“The height gap is approximately 4 cm (1.6in) among pre-school boys and 3 cm (1.2in) among pre-school girls, and again the South Koreans would be taller.”

Prof. Daniel Schwekendiek points out that the height difference cannot be attributed to genetics, because the two populations are the same.

“We’re dealing with the Korean people,” he says, “and Korea is interesting because it basically hasn’t experienced any immigration for many centuries.”

Martin Bloem is head of nutrition at the World Food Programme, which has been providing food aid to North Korea since 1995. He says poor diet in the early years of life leads to stunted growth.

“Food and what happens in the first two years of life is actually critical for people’s height later,” he says.

In the 1990s North Korea suffered a terrible famine. Today, according to the World Food Programme, “one in every three children remains chronically malnourished or ‘stunted’, meaning they are too short for their age”.

South Korea, in contrast, has experienced rapid economic growth. Bloem says “economic growth is one of the main determinants of height improvement”.

So while North Koreans have been getting shorter, South Koreans have been getting taller.

“If you look at older Koreans,” says Prof. Daniel Schwekendiek, “we now see a situation where the average South Korean woman is approaching the height of the average North Korean man.

“This is to my knowledge a unique situation, where women become taller than men.”

The secretive nature of North Korea makes it difficult to find reliable data for analysis.

Prof. Daniel Schwekendiek has studied refugees, but he rejects the notion that people driven to cross the border to South Korea are the most disadvantaged and therefore most likely to be stunted.

The refugees, he says, “come from all social strata and from all regions”.

He has also studied data collected by the North Korean government and by international organizations working in North Korea, which he says support his findings.

It seems that this height statistic reveals a tragic fact – that as South Koreans have got richer and taller, North Korean children are being stunted by malnourishment.