Global adherence to a healthy and sustainable diet and potential reduction in premature death

Summary

This global epidemiological analysis quantifies adherence to the Planetary Health Diet across countries and projects substantial mortality reductions associated with dietary shift. Using data from 206,404 individuals across three large US cohorts, the authors estimate that improving global PHDI from a mean of 85 to 120 could prevent approximately 15 million deaths annually (27% of total mortality), with prevention estimates ranging from 2.5 million cardiovascular deaths to 0.7 million neurodegenerative deaths. The findings suggest that adoption of healthy and sustainable diets aligned with planetary boundaries would yield major direct health benefits whilst contributing to UN Sustainable Development Goals, although authors appropriately caution that exact numerical estimates depend on assumptions with limited regional data.

UK applicability

The UK, as a high-income nation with existing dietary guidelines, would likely have relatively higher baseline PHDI scores than the global mean of 85; however, the findings suggest substantial room for improvement in UK population adherence to plant-forward, sustainable dietary patterns. UK implementation would require food environment and policy interventions, and refinement of mortality estimates would benefit from UK-specific diet–disease epidemiology data.

Key measures

Planetary Health Dietary Index (PHDI, scale 0–140); national and global PHDI scores; total and cause-specific preventable deaths (cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, and other conditions); percentage of total deaths preventable

Outcomes reported

The study calculated current national and global adherence to the Planetary Health Diet (PHD) using the Planetary Health Dietary Index (PHDI) across countries, and estimated cause-specific mortality that could be prevented by shifting from current diets to the PHD using data from three large US cohorts.

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