Unhealthy diets get over 11 million people killed every year, and yeah, those deaths are pretty much preventable, according to a new major study.
This is not a drill! Your unhealthy diet could lead you to an early grave, since our diets lacking in nutrition are responsible for more deaths every year than smoking, per The Guardian! Researchers are saying that it’s not about junk food per se and all of the sugar and unhealthy fats we tend to consume way too much of these days. No, the problem is that our diets are severely lacking in nutritious foods and all kinds of vitamins and minerals that are paramount in our lives.
This particular cited research is part of the Global Burden of Disease Study by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle. It was published in the Lancet medical journal.
Unhealthy diets lead to preventable deaths
The same study says that one in five deaths are preventable if we include more fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes in our daily meals. Otherwise, in the absence of nutrition, the biggest culprits for untimely deaths are heart attacks and strokes, but also cancers and type 2 diabetes. The research says that eating too few fruits and vegetables and sprinkling way too much salt in our meals leads to all of that. Not to mention that by making these changes in your food routine, you could shave off two-thirds of the possible years of disabilities that can be attributed to unhealthy diets.
“Our findings show that suboptimal diet is responsible for more deaths than any other risks globally, including tobacco smoking, highlighting the urgent need for improving human diet across nations,” the researchers warn.
Their conclusions are that world health initiatives have focused constantly on cutting sugar, salt, and fats from daily diets when the best solution would be to advocate for the inclusion of nutritious foods, as many of them as possible.
In 2017, unhealthy diets were responsible for 10.9 million deaths, or 22 percent of all deaths among adults, while tobacco was held responsible for 8 million deaths among the same demographic, in the same time frame.
