Fewer than 0.1% of adults in the United Kingdom adhere to the U.K. Government’s Eatwell Guide for a healthy, balanced diet.
Adults could add nearly 9 years of life expectancy by switching from an unhealthy diet to the diet outlined in the U.K.’s Eatwell Guide, a U.K. Biobank study has shown. Those who already follow the ‘median’ diet in the U.K., which only partially follows the Eatwell Guide recommendations, could gain around 3 years in life expectancy by making the full switch to a healthier diet. The study authors are calling for long-term action to be taken to enable more adults to eat healthily in order to reduce the burden of disease from poor diet.
Poor diet and lack of physical activity are “leading global risks to health,” according to the World Health Organization (WHO)Trusted Source. In order to improve diet globally, the WHO is working with countries to commit to a number of initiatives, including the elimination of trans fatsTrusted Source, reducing salt intakeTrusted Source and developing guidelines around food labellingTrusted Source and the use of artificial sweetenersTrusted Source. The United Kingdom Government published its Eatwell Guide in 2016 to help people follow a healthy, balanced diet. It outlines the importance of eating at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, reducing salt and saturated fat intake, and promotes the consumption of whole grains and pulses, alongside suggestions for portion size and caloric intake.
Despite this guide being published to ensure policy in the U.K. is developed in line with these dietary aims, research published in BMJ Open suggests that less than 0.1% of the country’s population follows a diet that adheres to the guide’s recommendations. The U.K. Biobank is a database set up in 2006 that tracks the health of half a million people, aged between 40 and 69 years, and living in the U.K. The Biobank collects data on the diets of participants, as well as on their overall health. A recent study by a team of researchers based at the University of Bergen, Norway analysed U.K. Biobank data from over 465,000 participants to determine the impact of adherence to the diet outlined in the Eatwell Guide on their life expectancy. Its results appear in Nature Food.
