We need to talk about nuts — but not the salted variety. That is one message to emerge from a vast study of the eating habits of adults in 195 countries, which suggests that a poor diet is implicated in a fifth of deaths worldwide. This amounts to 11m lost lives in 2017, comfortably outstripping the estimated 7m who died from tobacco-related illnesses.
It is not so much that we are eating badly, although that is undoubtedly true. Rather, according to this contribution to the Global Burden of Disease study, which appeared in the Lancet, we are not eating sufficiently well.
“This study affirms what many have thought for several years — that poor diet is responsible for more deaths than any other risk factor in the world,” said study co-author Christopher Murray of the University of Washington.