Western diet’s spread across the globe could be harmful

Weight related problems are something that the West knows a lot about. You have to question the food habits of a nation when a great chunk of its population is overweight or worse, obese. But the food habits of the West no longer belong to them only. An increasing number of people in different nations are adopting the same diet and might even suffer the same fate as the West.

Representational Image – CC Licensed / Wikimedia Commons

According to a recent study by the researchers at the University of Minnesota, they analyzed the global trends in diet choices and found that in the recent times the consumers have developed an affinity towards the western diet which has proven to have strong negative effects on a person’s health.

David Tilman, who is the professor of Ecology at the University and also the author of the study said,” There is nutrition transition occurring around the world. People all around the world, as incomes go up, choose more calories and meat in their diet.” He also added that now we have a whole new group of people who are malnourished not because they don’t get enough food but because they eat the foods that have no nutrition at all, thus contradicting the traditional trends of malnutrition.

They found that a group of nations in 2009, with the highest amount of GDP had an average per capita empty calorie demand of 1,400 kcal a day, while the group with lower amount of GDP has a requirement of only 285 kcal per day.

The study attributes the negative health impacts to increase in the consumption of processed foods as these products are low on nutritional benefits and contain empty calories. A western diet which is high in fat, meat, salt and sugars is low in fibers. Another researcher, Ian Myles from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases explained that the refined foods are mistaken for bacteria by the body which in turn initiates a false immune attack distracting the immune system. Due to this the disease resisting capabilities of the body are degraded when it faces real bacteria.

Tilman has been constantly involved in researches related to the nutritional value of food. In 2014, he led a team of researchers for a study about the connection between better diet and lower cost of agriculture.