Poor diet threatens the US, experts say 1:04
(CNN) - Poor diet in the United States is not only bad for us. It is now considered a threat to national security.
Food-related illnesses are a growing problem for the U.S. economy, worsening health disparities and impacting national security, according to a document published Monday in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition .
Poor diet is the leading cause of disease in the United States, and unhealthy diets kill more than half a million people each year, a group of experts who formed the Federal Nutrition Research Advisory Group wrote in the document.
About 46% of adults in the country have a poor quality diet, and this number rises to 56% among children, according to the report.
Meanwhile, health spending in the United States has almost tripled from 1979 to 2018, going from 6.9% to 17.7% of the Gross Domestic Product. This increase in health spending, the advisory group said, affects government budgets, the competitiveness of the US private sector, and workers' wages.
Diet-related health inequalities affect minority, rural, and low-income communities.
"Although social and economic factors such as less education, poverty, prejudice and reduced opportunities are the main contributors to inequalities in the population, they are also important barriers to access to healthy food and adequate nutrition," read in the document.
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"Poor diets lead to a tough cycle of lower academic performance in school, loss of productivity at work, increased risk of chronic disease, increased health costs and poverty for the most vulnerable Americans," he adds.
Lack of proper nutrition is also a threat to national security, the document says, claiming that diet-related illnesses are hurting the readiness of the US military and the budgets of the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs. from the United States.
71% of people between the ages of 17 and 24 do not qualify for military service. Obesity is the main factor for medical disqualification, according to the report, which cites figures from a 2018 report.
The need for more investment in nutrition
The authors of the report called for expansion of federal investment in nutrition science by creating a new Office of the National Director of Food and Nutrition or a new Federal Nutrition Research task force, with the aim of improving coordination within of the agencies that budget research on this topic.
The document also calls for "accelerating and strengthening" nutritional research within the National Institutes of Health by creating a new National Institute of Nutrition.
"Every day, our country suffers from the enormous health, social and economic costs of poor diets," said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, co-author of the paper, and dean and professor Jean Mayer of Nutrition at the Friedman School of Science and Policy at Tufts University Nutrition.
In a statement, Mozaffarian called for a "great national effort to address current nutrition challenges, generating critical science to rapidly treat and prevent diet-related diseases, improve health equity, increase the resilience of the population to to the covid-19 and future pandemics, and promote fundamental discoveries and translational research for a better life. ”