Every second to third premature death preventable

New study shows the relation between cardiovascular diseases and nutrition in Europe. Life Of the 4.3 million cardiovascular deaths in Europe in 2016, 2.1 million were the result of poor nutrition. The 28 EU member states account for around 900,000, Russia for 600,000 and the Ukraine for 250,000 of these deaths. Every second to third premature cardiovascular death could be prevented by better nutrition. These were the findings of an international research team led by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, the nutriCARD competence cluster (all Germany) and the University of Washington in the USA. The findings were published in the current issue of the European Journal of Epidemiology. For the study, the team evaluated representative data from the Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) which were collected between 1990 to 2016. They analysed the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attacks and strokes, in the 51 countries that the World Health Organization (WHO) has designated as European region. In addition to the EU member states and other European countries, several states in the Middle East and Central Asia were also included, such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Based on food consumption and other risk factors in the respective countries, the researchers calculated the percentage of deaths attributable to an unbalanced diet, for example, the underconsumption of whole grain products, nuts, seeds and vegetables, as well as the overconsumption of salt.  Clear differences between the countries