In a recent study that was published in the journal Nature Medicine, researchers estimated the absolute and proportional burdens of new cases of type 2 diabetes (T2D) among adults in 184 countries using a novel risk assessment model, particularly the direct and body weight-mediated effects of 11 dietary factors, both separately and collectively.
T2D is a prominent cause of death worldwide and has significant socioeconomic effects. Globally, the number of persons living with diabetes (90% T2D cases) increased from 108 to 537 million between 1980 and 2021, along with rises in adult obesity.
Globally, the prevalence of T2D has been steadily rising over the past 40 years; if unchecked, T2D would further impair human health and economic productivity, placing enormous pressure.
Numerous dietary variables have been shown to have direct and weight gain-mediated effects on the etiology of T2D in studies. However, the exact and proportional effects of a poor diet or particular dietary determinants on the occurrence of T2D worldwide are yet unknown.
In the present study, researchers estimated the effects of 11 dietary factors, viz., inadequate intake of whole grains, fruits, nuts, yogurt, seeds, and vegetables (non-starchy) and excessive consumption of refined wheat and rice, unprocessed red meat, processed meat, sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), fruit juices, and potatoes on global T2D incidence.
They made these estimates using dietary data from the Global Dietary Database (GDD) for adults in 184 countries. The team presented the absolute change in the proportional burden of T2D attributable to suboptimal diet and each risk factor between 1990 and 2018 globally stratified by world region.
GDD delineated all 184 countries into world regions, which helped the researchers specifically discuss T2D trends in the 30 most populous countries for four dietary factors, inadequate fruit, nuts, seeds, and non-starchy vegetable intake, and excessive intake of fruit juices based on effects mediated through weight gain.
They stratified their findings by age, gender, urbanicity, and education of participating individuals. In addition, they stratified country-wise findings by sociodemographic index (SDI), a measure of a country’s development. SDI is expressed on a scale of zero to one based on the average rankings of educational fulfillment, per capita income, and fertility rates.
