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A deathly diet

If anyone ever doubted that our world is changing – and with it the risks that we face as individuals and as a society – then a recent global study on causes of death provides a sober reminder.

In 1990, the things most likely to kill us were child and maternal malnutrition and unsafe water, poor sanitation, and lack of hand washing. Today these have been replaced by dietary risks and high blood pressure.

The Global Burden Disease study is recognised as the most authoritative work on global causes of disease and early death.

The research, led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), the University of Washington and the University of Melbourne and published in the Lancet journal, looked at 79 risks using data from 188 countries between 1990 and 2013.

While the top risks associated with early death in both men and women were high blood pressure, smoking, high body mass index (BMI), and high blood sugar levels, the greatest cumulative effect on health came from poor diet.

Startling facts

Forgive me if I throw a few facts and statistics at you – but these facts and statistics tell a compelling story.

According to the researchers, 21% of global deaths can now be attributed to unhealthy eating – diets high in red meat and sugary drinks, and lacking in fruit, vegetables and wholegrains. Around the world these diets contribute to the most deaths worldwide by triggering ailments including heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

As we might expect the risks vary greatly for men and women. For example smoking is a larger problem for men, ranking as the number-two risk and causing 4.4 million deaths. But for women, smoking is the number-six risk for early death, contributing to 1.4 million deaths. Similarly, alcohol is a top-10 risk factor for premature deaths in men, but it’s not a leading cause for females.

The leading risk factors associated with illness in 2013 were the same as for early deaths: high blood pressure, smoking, and high body mass index.

England in perspective

The data for the England, published in a separate analysis, is pretty depressing as well.

First the good news: between 1990 and 2013, life expectancy in England increased by 5.4 years: that’s one of the biggest increases in the EU15+ countries (from 75.9 years in 1990 to 81.3 years in 2013).

But although we are living longer we are not living healthier. We’re now spending more years in ill-health, often with a combination of conditions, some of which would have previously been fatal. For example, with diabetes, the years of life lost to the disease have decreased by 56%, but years living with disability have increased by over 75%.

Preventable death and disease

So much of this is preventable.

Indeed, potentially preventable risk factors taken together explain 40% of ill health in England.

Unhealthy diet and tobacco are the two largest contributors (diet accounts for 10.8% of total disease burden and tobacco 10.7%). That means that for the first time is more influential on how well and how long we live than smoking!

In addition 9.5% of deaths could being overweight or obese, 7.9% to high blood pressure and just 5% to alcohol or drug use.

The rise of NCDs

These diseases that are killing us now are known as ‘non-communicable diseases’ or NCDs.

According to the World Health Organization, NCDs kill 38 million people each year – more than 40% of these are premature and avoidable. Cardiovascular diseases account for most NCD deaths, or 17.5 million people annually, cancers (8.2 million), respiratory diseases (4 million), and diabetes (1.5 million). These four diseases account for 82% of all NCD deaths.

It’s also worth understanding that NCDs are not limited to wealthy or heavily industrialised countries. An increasing proportion, as many as 80%, now occur in low- and moderate-income countries.

Monoculture madness

In part this is because our modern food system encourages huge global monocultures of just a few crops. All over the world traditional, geographically, seasonally and culturally appropriate and diverse diets are giving way to the narrow Western Pattern way of eating, which causes so much devastation to our health.

Like the premature deaths it causes, this global agricultural monoculture is avoidable – if we care enough to stop it. Not only would our health benefit, our environment would too.

It seems like a no-brainer – it also seems well past time that our so-called leaders started paying attention to the damage the global food system is doing to global citizens and took steps to exercise the duty of care which they have to us all.

Pat Thomas, Editor