Nutrition Transition and Chronic Diseases in India (1990–2019): An Ecological Study Based on Animal and Processed Food Caloric Intake and Adequacy according to Nutrient Needs

Abstract

The Indian diet is becoming westernized with a potential threat to human health. This ecological study aimed at analyzing the nutritional transition in India during the 1990–2019 period within the framework of the newly developed 3V index, considering the degree of processing starting with industrially processed foods (IPFs, i.e., the Real/’Vrai’ metric 1), plant/animal calorie ratio (i.e., the Vegetal metric 2), and diversity of food intake (i.e., the Varied metric 3). Total and food group (n = 14) caloric intakes, percentages of animal and IPF calories, adequacy to the Indian Recommended Dietary Allowances, and prevalence of chronic diseases were retrieved from web databases (e.g., OECD.Stats, Our World in Data and FAO-STAT) and Indian food composition table. The total calorie intake increased by 31% over thirty years, being mainly linked to increased consumption of dairy products and IPF, but still remains below the average recommended intake in 2019. The IPF and animal calorie shares increased from 3.6 to 11.6% and 15.1 to 24.3%, respectively, while micronutrient intakes improved in 2019. In the same time, prevalence of overweight/obesity and type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease mortality increased. In conclusion, the evolution of the Indian diet deviates from metrics 1 and 2 and improves in metric 3, which may not be a sufficient metric in terms of the alleviation of chronic diseases. Therefore, while improving food diversity and replacing refined with wholegrain cereals, Indians should also curb increasing their consumption of IPF and animal calories.

How can food processing achieve food and nutrition security?

“…to prevent deficiencies, but meeting nutritional requirements is not enough to prevent the development of chronic diseases if the food matrix quality is too degraded and/or too artificial (Fardet & Rock, 2022a). For example, in China (Fardet et al, 2021) and India (Fardet et al, 2022), improvements in nutritional requirements have been observed during the last 30 years of the food transition. However, an exponential increase in the prevalence of chronic diseases is correlated with increased consumption of industrial foods and animal products, suggesting that the quality of calories appears to be more important than simply providing sufficient nutrients and calories.…”

“…In developing and emerging countries, there is a lower level of UPF consumption combined with a lower level of nutritional adequacy, that is, a more monotonous diet, but still a lower level of chronic disease prevalence. Therefore, things do not get better by providing cheap UPFs, as evidenced by the increase in chronic diseases in these countries when UPFs penetrate the market (the triple burden of malnutrition is now emerging) (Baker & Friel, 2016; Popkin et al, 2021; Popkin & Ng, 2021), for example in China (Fardet et al, 2021), Brazil (Monteiro et al, 2015) and India (Fardet et al, 2022). In countries such as Brazil, for example, the increase in UPF contributed to approximately 20% of the total diet‐related ecological footprint over the last 30 years (da Silva et al, 2021).…”