A research comparing global eating habits has named Uganda as one of the countries with the world’s healthiest foods and diet.
The research published in ‘The Lancet Global Health’ journal puts Uganda at No.5, only Chad at Number one, Sierra Leone, Mali and Gambia in that order are ahead of Uganda.
The study revealed a worldwide rise in consumption of healthy food, including fruit and vegetables, but expressed worry over the increase in the amount of junk food eaten.
Researchers used national data from almost 90 per cent of the global population to analyse how people ate between 1990 and 2010.
The study revealed that high-income nations, such as the US, Canada, Western European nations, Australia and New Zealand, had better diets based on healthy items but substantially poorer diets when unhealthy food was considered.
And countries in sub-Saharan Africa and some Asian nations, including China and India, saw no improvement in their diets over the past two decades.
Scoring lowest for healthy foods were European countries including Belgium and Hungary and republics of the former Soviet Union – including Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
When age and sex were assessed, researchers found that older people ate better than younger adults, and women are better than men.
Dr Fumiaki Imamura, of the University of Cambridge, who led the research, said that improving diet has a “crucial role to play” in reducing the burden of non-communicable diseases, which will account for 75 per cent of all deaths by 2020.
The countries with the healthiest diets overall were:
1. Chad
2. Sierra Leone
3. Mali
4. Gambia
5.Uganda
6. Ghana
7. Ivory Coast
8. Senegal
9. Israel
10. Somalia
The countries with the least healthy diets overall were:
1. Armenia
2. Hungary
3. Belgium
4. Czech Republic
5. Kazakhstan
6. Belarus
7. Argentina
8. Turkmenistan
9. Mongolia
10. Slovakia
