We’ve all heard it before – that a healthy diet.. err ‘keeps you healthy’.

There are so many interpretations of what that means but here is a major scientific study, just published, which points us all in the right direction.

Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and published on 3rd April 2019 in The Lancet the authors estimated the proportion of disease-specific burden attributable to each dietary risk factor among adults aged 25 years or older.  They were then able to calculate the number of deaths and disabilities attributable to diet for each disease outcome.

Across the Globe, in 2017, it was found that dietary risks were responsible for 11 million deaths (22% of all deaths among adults) and 255 million disabilities.

Unsurprisingly Cardiovascular Disease was the leading cause of diet-related deaths (10 million [9–10] deaths) followed by cancers and type 2 diabetes – about half of which occurred among adults aged younger than 70 years.

You can read the paper in full here:

Health effects of dietary risks in 195 countries