Poor diet is a significant risk factor for obesity, type 2 diabetes cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancers in Americans. According to the Food and Drug Administration, it causes over one million deaths every year. It also leads to $1.1 trillion in healthcare expenditures and lost productivity. It contributes to health disparities based on income, education, zip code and race.
A recent study conducted by researchers from the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University revealed that even though diet quality among U.S. adults improved between 1999 and 2020, the number of Americans with poor diet quality is still high. Also, the differences are getting worse in some cases.
American diets have seen some improvement in the last two decades. But not everyone is benefiting from these changes. One of the researchers and cardiologist, Dariush Mozaffarian emphasizes that achieving nutritional and health equity requires addressing barriers to accessing and eating nourishing food, as many Americans are eating worse.
In this study, researchers used data of 51,703 adults from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. It was conducted between 1999 and 2020. Researchers used the American Heart Association diet score to measure the quality of their diet. The diet included fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, whole grains, processed meat and sugary beverages. 72.6% of the participants completed two recalls.
When researchers observed the collected data, they found that the number of adults with poor diet quality decreased from 48.8% to 36.7% in the last 20 years. On the other hand, the number of adults with intermediate diet quality increased from 50.6% to 61.1%. They also found that the number of adults with an ideal diet quality improved. But it remained exceptionally low. Changes in diet include higher intakes of nuts/seeds, whole grains, poultry, cheese, eggs, and lower consumption of refined grains, sugary drinks, fruit juice, and milk.
Researchers also found that these improvements in the quality of diet were not the same in younger adults, women, Hispanic adults and those with higher education, income, food security and access to private health insurance. But these improvements were lower among older adults, men Black adults and those with lower education, less income, food insecurity, or non-private health insurance.
This study clearly shows that there is a need to address nutrition security and other health determinants such as housing, transportation and structural racism. So, it will help us fix this issue of national nutrition crisis.
