It was noticed that British food isn’t that terrible, after all. A universal survey has resulted that when it comes to having the healthiest packaged foods and drinks, the UK takes the upper hand, having the USA in 2nd place and Australia coming in at 3rd.
The George Institute for Global Health scrutinized more than 400,000 food and drink products from 12 different countries and territories around the world. The survey emphasized the high levels of sugar, saturated fat, salt and calories/kJ in many of our favourite food items.
The countries were scored using Australia’s Health Star Rating system — which considers the levels of the nutrients such as energy, salt, sugar, saturated fat as well as protein, calcium and fiber and considers a star rating from ½ (least healthy) to 5 (the most healthy).
It came to the result that the UK had the highest average Health Star Rating of 2.83, followed by the US at 2.82 and Australia at 2.81. India came to the lowest rating of just 2.27 followed by China at 2.43 with Chile coming third from bottom at 2.44. Obesity Reviews published the results.
Lead author Dr Elizabeth Dunford mentioned that the results were concerning because packaged foods and drinks are driving a double burden of diet-related diseases in many low- and middle-income countries.
“Universally we’re all eating more and more processed foods and that’s an issue because our supermarkets shelves are fully equipped with products that are high in bad fats, sugar and salt and are potentially making us ill as well as weak. It was resulted that some countries are doing a much better job than others. Unfortunately, it’s the poorer nations that are least able to address the adverse health consequences that have the unhealthiest foods.”
