Are the Chinese Moving toward a Healthy Diet? Evidence from Macro Data from 1961 to 2017.

Aixi Han,Li Chai,Xiawei Liao,Jing Ming,Tianhao Sun

doi:10.3390/ijerph17155294

Abstract

The change in diet structure is one of the critical features of social transformation, and diet structure is directly related to human health. In China, with rapid economic development, changes in the diet structure of the population have begun and are proceeding at a fairly rapid rate. In order to reveal how the Chinese diet is approaching or deviating from the nutritional goal, a novel index, NDBI (National Dietary Balance Index), is developed in this study to investigate the Chinese diet from 1961 to 2017 at a national level. The results show that the Chinese diet has transitioned from the under-intake stage to the over-intake stage. Before the 1980s, Chinese people ate all foods inadequately except staple foods; after the 1980s, the issue of under-intake began to fade, and the intake of meats even became excessive. The intake of staple foods is always excessive during this period. Currently, the Chinese diet is still unhealthy because of the inadequate intake of dairy products and the excessive intake of staple foods and meats. By evaluating diet structure on a national level, this study can help people to better understand how the Chinese diet deviated from the nutritional goal and provides information for policymakers intervening in China’s food consumption.

Highlights

Affected by regional habits and changes in social development, dietary consumption has regionality and variability, but it affects people’s quality of life and health to a large extent
We obtain the National Diet Balance Index (NDBI) scores of different food types from 1961 to 2017, which are used to observe the trend of the food consumption balance of various food categories of Chinese households in the past 57 years
There are three kinds of foods: cereals, pulses, and tubers. The score of this category did not decline until 2006, but this is only by less than one point, which shows the problem of the over-intake of staple foods

Summary

Introduction

Affected by regional habits and changes in social development, dietary consumption has regionality and variability, but it affects people’s quality of life and health to a large extent. Inappropriate diets may lead to the prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as cardiovascular disease or diabetes, which severely harm human health [1]. Based on the dietary guidelines, a scientific evaluation method can be established to measure people’s dietary quality and guide people to improve their nutritional status. The dietary quality evaluation is an essential part of the nutritional status evaluation. The most commonly used method is to use the dietary evaluation index to evaluate and calculate dietary habits and behaviors that are difficult to quantify accurately. As dietary intake plays an important role in energy balance and has a significant impact on obesity and many non-communicable diseases, it is increasingly the case worldwide that scholars often use some diet quality indexes to assess whether the diet is balanced and determine its impact on health [1,2].

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion