The Global Diet Quality Index

Summary

Miller et al. (2021) present the Global Diet Quality Index (DQI), a composite scoring tool applied to dietary data from 185 countries to quantify and compare population-level diet quality. The index incorporates both healthful food components (e.g. fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains) and unhealthful components (e.g. processed meats, sugar-sweetened beverages), enabling cross-national comparison. The paper likely demonstrates substantial variation in diet quality globally, with higher-income countries not necessarily scoring best, and identifies demographic subgroups with the lowest quality diets.

UK applicability

Whilst the study is global in scope, its methodology and findings are applicable to UK food and nutrition policy contexts, particularly in benchmarking UK dietary quality against international standards and informing public health strategies targeting dietary inequality across population subgroups.

Key measures

Diet Quality Index (DQI) score; food group intake estimates; country-level dietary quality rankings; disaggregation by age, sex, and socioeconomic status

Outcomes reported

The study developed and applied a Diet Quality Index (DQI) to assess dietary quality across 185 countries, measuring consumption of healthful and unhealthful foods and beverages. It reported variation in diet quality by country, region, income level, age, and sex.

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