The countries with the healthiest and unhealthiest diets revealed

A new study into the rates of deaths linked to diet across the world has found that people in Israel are top when it comes to healthy eating.

After analysing almost two decades of dietary data from 195 countries, along with studies about nutrition-related health risks and benefits, the researchers estimate that poor food choices killed 11 million people worldwide in 2017 alone - “mostly by contributing to cardiovascular disease and cancer”, says Time magazine.

Indeed, eating and drinking better could prevent one in five early deaths worldwide, according to a paper on the study published in The Lancet.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Although “diets vary from one country to another, eating too few fruits and vegetables and too much salt accounted for half of all deaths and two-thirds of the years of disability attributable to diet”, reports The Guardian.

Israel had the lowest rate of diet-related deaths, at 89 per 100,000 people, followed by France, Spain and Japan, while Uzbekistan had the highest, at 892 deaths.

The UK ranked 23rd (127 deaths per 100,000), while the US trailed at 43rd (171 deaths), below Rwanda and Nigeria.

Among the other big population centres, China ranked 140th (350 deaths) and India 118th (310 deaths).

China and Japan “have curiously contrasting fortunes that reflect their changing relationship with salt”, says the BBC.

China consumes enormous amounts of it, with soy and other salty sauces playing a key role in the national cuisine, just as they do in Japan. But by contrast to Japan, the rising popularity of processed foods is introducing yet more salt into the diets of people in China, which the study found has the highest sodium-related death rate of any country.

“Japan is very interesting because if you go back 30 to 40 years, they like China today had enormous salt intake,” study co-author Professor Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, told the BBC.

“Salt is still [Japan’s] number one problem, but it has come down dramatically. And they have a diet that is higher in many of the things we think are protective for heart disease such as vegetables and fruit.”

Adding in more whole grains and nuts may be a good place to start in improving diets, fellow study co-author Dr Ashkan Afshin told Time. Globally, people were eating only 12% of the recommended amount of nuts, and only 23% of the advised helping of whole grains, the researchers found.

“Historically, fruits and vegetables have been the centre of attention,” Afshin says. “Although they are important… gaps in the consumption of nuts and seeds and whole grains are much higher.”

The five countries with the unhealthiest diet:

1. Uzbekistan
2. Afghanistan
3. Marshall Islands
4. Papua New Guinea
5. Vanuatu

And the five countries with the healthiest diet:

1. Israel
2. France
3. Spain
4. Japan
5. Andorra