Abstract
SummaryWorldwide, obesity almost tripled between 1975 and 2016 and is now prevalent in both rich and poor countries. Using annual food availability data produced by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) covering half a century in 118 countries, this article explores the diets that are central to the problem of obesity, identifying groups of countries with similar consumption patterns. Applying algorithms from the fuzzy clustering literature, five distinct consumption patterns are revealed whose dietary composition broadly corresponds to diets that we label ‘Western’, ‘Traditional’, ‘Mediterranean’, ‘Tropical’ and ‘Vegetarian’. Despite differences in dietary characteristics, all five share two common themes: rising total calories and declining healthiness, both of which are linked to the substitution of plant‐based foods with food derived from animals. That the evidence points to a convergence on the ‘Western’ diet, the most obesogenic and least healthy of all the diets we consider, is a cause for concern. The key message is that in a future where people are predicted to live longer – but not necessarily healthier – lives, recent efforts to address the challenge are prescient, and as the results in the article imply, need to be heeded globally.
Highlights
In this article we summarise the results from a study of national
In order to facilitate the monitoring of global food consumption patterns it is Box 2: Cluster analysis useful to identify groups of countries with similar dietary characteristics and, subject to the caveats highlighted above, the information collated by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is well suited to this purpose
Using a recently developed clustering technique, we identify five distinct groups of apparent food consumption based solely on the evolution of national calorie intake, all of which are observed to have become increasingly obesogenic over time but at rates indicative of convergence
Summary
In order to facilitate the monitoring of global food consumption patterns it is Box 2: Cluster analysis useful to identify groups of countries with similar dietary characteristics and, subject to the caveats highlighted above, the information collated by the FAO is well suited to this purpose. Using a recently developed clustering technique, we identify five distinct groups of apparent food consumption based solely on the evolution of national calorie intake, all of which are observed to have become increasingly obesogenic over time but at rates indicative of convergence (higher growth in the least calorific dietary types). Fuzzy clustering algorithms (see Bezdek, 1981) permit each country to belong to more than one cluster simultaneously with different degrees of membership This is attractive since it captures the possibility that different groups of consumers within a country follow different dietary patterns. Results from the cluster analysis applied to half a century of annual per capita calorie consumption in the 118 countries in the sample suggest that there are five clusters (CL1 to CL5) each of roughly comparable size whether in terms of countries or population As such, they all represent common food consumption patterns. The dietary composition of the clusters identified can illustrate whether this corresponds to the Western Diet
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