Newswise — Poor diet continues to take a toll on American adults. It’s a major risk factor for obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers, and more than one million Americans die every year from diet-related diseases, according to the Food and Drug Administration . Poor diet and food insecurity is also costly, attributing to an estimated $1.
1 trillion in healthcare expenditures and lost productivity . These burdens also contribute to major health disparities by income, education, zip code, race, and ethnicity. In a study from the Food is Medicine Institute at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine , researchers found that diet quality among U.
S. adults improved modestly between 1999 and 2020. However, they also found that the number of Americans with poor diet quality remains stubbornly high.
Most notably, disparities persist and, in some cases, are worsening. “While we’ve seen some modest improvement in American diets in the last two decades, those improvements are not reaching everyone, and many Americans are eating worse,” says Dariush Mozaffarian , cardiologist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute, and senior author on the study. “Our new research shows that the nation can’t achieve nutritional and health equity until we address the barriers many Americans face when it comes to accessing and eating nourishing food.
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