# Countries Healthy Diets / Unhealthy Diets **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 22, 2015, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-healthy-diets-unhealthy-diets/713307 "2015-02-22T01:09:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![LavenderBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e95f7d/32.png) [@LavenderBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LavenderBlue)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2015, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-healthy-diets-unhealthy-diets/713307/1 "2015-02-22T01:09:40Z")
> **[The country with the world' worst diet may surprise you](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/revealed-the-countries-with-the-best-and-worst-diets-in-the-world-10057363.html)** > > A rise in healthy diets is being outpaced by people eating more junk food I wonder how accurate this is. ---
**Author:** ![Elemenopy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b5e925/32.png) [@Elemenopy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elemenopy)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2015, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-healthy-diets-unhealthy-diets/713307/2 "2015-02-22T02:32:38Z")
I’m a bit suspicious of their metric for a healthy diet. From what I know off the top of my head, the diets of the countries on the “worst” list are quite meat and dairy -centric. Not necessarily unhealthy overall, however. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2015, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-healthy-diets-unhealthy-diets/713307/3 "2015-02-22T06:58:35Z")
Their metric for a healthy diet treats any and all meat as unhealthy, all fish as healthy (does that include shellfish or not?), any vegetables as healthy (except for saturated and monounsaturated oils). Talk about broad brushes… ---
**Author:** ![kk\_fusion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kk_fusion/32/15276_2.png) [@kk\_fusion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kk_fusion)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2015, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-healthy-diets-unhealthy-diets/713307/4 "2015-02-22T08:26:23Z")
> [@](#): > > The study revealed that high-income nations, such as the US, Canada, Western European nations, Australia and New Zealand, had better diets based on healthy items but substantially poorer diets when unhealthy food was considered. So rich people have more options to eat healthy stuff, or quick-satisfying junk food, depending on their choice. No new revelation, really. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2015, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-healthy-diets-unhealthy-diets/713307/5 "2015-02-22T12:01:45Z")
I mean, they kind of have a point. If you go to Chad, you are going to eat a lot of produce and whole grains, very little meat, sugar or oil, and basically no processed food. I live in a place culturally and climatically similar to Chad, and we basically ate greens, peanuts and in-season fruit. I’m not sure how useful this information is to anyone, though. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2015, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-healthy-diets-unhealthy-diets/713307/6 "2015-02-22T13:51:29Z")
Just remember that meat eating appears to have initiated the evolution of homo from apes. So meat = bad, vegetable = good denies our genetic heritage. I am impressed by the fact that humans cannot survive a totally vegan diet without vitamin supplements. Even a hand full of ants a day will provide enough B12 for survival. Also getting most of your calories from carbs is not good and the high carb mantra is now thought by some to have set off the obesity epidemic. I’m sure that in 20 years all the latest dietary advice will have been refuted. When will they finally get it straight? ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2015, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-healthy-diets-unhealthy-diets/713307/7 "2015-02-22T15:10:29Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Just remember that meat eating appears to have initiated the evolution of homo from apes. So meat = bad, vegetable = good denies our genetic heritage. > > I am impressed by the fact that humans cannot survive a totally vegan diet without vitamin supplements. Even a hand full of ants a day will provide enough B12 for survival. Also getting most of your calories from carbs is not good and the high carb mantra is now thought by some to have set off the obesity epidemic. > > I’m sure that in 20 years all the latest dietary advice will have been refuted. When will they finally get it straight? when they dig up Ancel Keys and desecrate his corpse. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2015, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/countries-healthy-diets-unhealthy-diets/713307/8 "2015-02-22T17:16:30Z")
It’s accurate according to their definition of “healthy” and “unhealthy” … a couple of items of which are questionable but not most. Dairy is included in their healthy list **Elemenopy**. The [actual article](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(14)70381-X/fulltext) for anyone’s interest. The key word is “relatively” in reference to high and low of the listed “healthy” and “unhealthy” components. The lowest quintile for unprocessed red meat (something that some here may question) was 23 g per day compared to 47 for the middle quintile and 84 for the highest. Alternatively the range lowest to highest quintile for processed meats (something that few would debate) went from 3.9 to 34. No **Hari** they do not promote veganism in this article. The article’s take way is not aimed at making recommendations for individuals’ diets, but digging into regional dietary patterns. _Their_ point was that the way the news article linked in the op reports their findings, citing only the “overall” numbers, misses the variation in regional diets: > [@](#): > > To our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate dietary patterns among adults across the world. In 187 countries between 1990 and 2010, dietary patterns and their trends over time varied substantially depending on differences between healthy and unhealthy foods. The global variations were largely undetectable if we evaluated one scale of diet quality, as has been previously done.13, 14 Global public health should recognise diverse dietary trends based on healthy versus unhealthy foods, identify determinants of this diversity, and improve strategies for global, transnational, and domestic policy actions with a joint consideration of both healthy and unhealthy foods. … > > … Our novel findings show that associations between socioeconomic status and diet quality might vary substantially for diet patterns based on healthy versus unhealthy items, and also that such diet patterns are only weakly correlated. Different policies could be influencing the two dietary patterns—eg, transnational marketing and investment often promotes consumption of unhealthy foods, such as snacks in Thailand and soft drinks in Mexico,5, 6 whereas governmental strategies attempt to promote consumption of healthy food, such as the multifocal polices in Norway and nutrition education in South Korea.5, 8 When combined with assessment of nation-specific policies, our observations derived from individuals’ diets should help to understand and characterise influences of business, agriculture, and health policies on consumption of healthy food, consumption of unhealthy food, and population health in different countries. … “They” have had it pretty much right for years, very little is different now than what the American Heart Association said [15 years ago](http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/102/18/2284.full), with full appreciation of the limits of the extant data and full cautions when conclusions were based off of limited information; the media’s portrayal of what “they” say however consistently sucks. Yes, what “they” have been saying and still say with some changes around the edges, is to emphasize compete dietary patterns, lots of vegetables and fruits, fish, legumes, nuts, moderate lean meats and to limit foods that contain high amounts of saturated fats, highly processed foods, and to get carbs more from unprocessed whole foods and not from refined carb sources low in fiber. The fact that the media and Big Food Inc conspired to sell that as something other than that is not something that “they” can either control or are responsible for. Interesting alternative take on the healthiest dietary patterns by location [here](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2015/01/is-meat-unhealthy-part-vii.html): > [@](#): > > … there are semi-industrialized cultures that can help us answer this question, because they feature a somewhat traditional diet and lifestyle, combined with modern medicine and the rule of law. The so-called Blue Zones, areas of exceptional health and longevity, fall into this category. These include Sardinia, Italy; Okinawa, Japan; Loma Linda, California; Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; and Icaria, Greece. > > What do people eat in the Blue Zones? With the exception of one mostly vegetarian Blue Zone in Loma Linda, California, all of them eat meat, and most eat dairy and eggs. However, they tend to eat much less meat than people in affluent nations (though not necessarily less dairy and eggs). Blue Zone diets tend to be starchy, often based on grains, starchy tubers, and legumes. > > It’s worth keeping in mind that these populations are relatively isolated and may carry genetic variants that promote longevity. Also, they exhibit a complex of healthy behaviors that extends beyond diet, including regular physical activity and social interaction. However, these cultures provide us with a dietary template that is, at the very least, compatible with a long, healthy life. … Highly doubtful that the basic themes of a diet heavy in vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, and fish, while relatively less than the typical American amounts of red meat, and avoiding highly processed foods be it processed meat or refined carbs or sweetened beverages, which has been the core of what “they” have been saying for decades, will be refuted in 20 years.