Over the past few decades, there has been a dramatic change in the way the entire world eats, drinks and moves. Recent studies are looking more into the lives of the people, especially in developing countries, and how nutrition transition is affecting them physically and mentally.

Nutrition transition, a term coined by Barry Popkin of the University of North Carolina in 2004, is used to describe the changes in the ‘nutrition’ of people. “[It] is the combination of a change in diet and physical activity and that change leads to an increased amount of energy in calories that we take in, which is not matched by the calories we use,” said Stephen McGarvey, a professor of epidemiology and anthropology in Brown University.

People are more sedentary now compared to their grandparents’ time, even if they exercise regularly. Recent trends reveal that modern diets lean more towards foods that are rich in starch and sugar which give more energy but lack essential micro and macronutrients. The effects of this transition are linked to an increase in nutrition-related non-communicable diseases like obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disorders.

A recent paper published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in October 2018 shows the relationship between dietary factors, physical activity, and risk of cardiovascular diseases, in two Bolivian populations in Central South America. “The Tsimane have the lowest rates of heart disease ever recorded in any population in the world,” said Professor Thomas Kraft, one of the authors of the paper. Upon taking the research a step further, they looked at the diets of the Tsimane group, as it is one of the main contributors to cardiovascular diseases.

The study also looked at the second group of people called Moseten. They are an interesting comparison group because they are linguistically, genetically and culturally very closely related to the Tsimane. “Because [the Moseten] were missionized much earlier and because of their geographic location, they were more acculturated,” explained Kraft. The Moseten transitioned to speaking Spanish and started living closer to market towns where they could buy modern amenities like salt, oil, and sugar.

Comparing the two groups they found the diets of Tsimane are made up of complex-carbohydrates of high energy and low fat, coupled with physical activity. This includes fish, meats of domesticated animals, wild fruits and vegetables. This low-fat diet is positively correlated with low risks of cardiovascular disease. The result concludes that the two groups are steadily undergoing nutrition transition by switching to modern amenities which can be seen in the increased body fat and body mass index.

Another main reason for cardiovascular disorders is the rise in obesity of adults and children. Approximately 2.8 million people die of obesity-related disorders globally, each year. Even though some of the causes of obesity are due to genetic factors, the fact remains that most of them are due to poor physical activity. In the case of developing countries, the rapid changes in diet and urbanization result in increased rates of overweight and obesity. “They are building up excess calories from more energy taken in their food and not as much energy is used in physical activity. And the result is we store that energy in the form of fat in our body,” said McGarvey explaining one of the main causes of obesity. And according to recent findings, adult obesity is increasing in the United States.

According to the analysis by the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), the nation’s premier health-related telephone survey operated under the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) there is a rise in levels of adult obesity with seven states exceeding the 35% mark and 29 states exceeding the 30% mark.

A study in 2016 calculated the worldwide trends in body mass index (BMI) and related it to obesity in children and adults. They pooled and analyzed the data from the non-communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC), a worldwide network of health researchers. The results showed that BMI and obesity was increasing in low and middle-income countries. Samoa, one of the islands in the South Pacific, shows more than a 30% increase in obesity. “[The Samoans] were experiencing social and economic changes which were leading to changes in their diet and physical activity,” said McGarvey, who contributed and helped write the paper.

The evidence points to the fact that even though nutrition transition has in fact curbed global hunger and malnutrition, it has brought forth another array of diseases for the people to combat. These nutrition-related disorders can be brought down by both individual and structural changes. Individual changes can be done by improving the quality of food (home-cooked meals rather than take-outs) and engaging more in physical activity. The structural changes can be changing the food prices, supporting agriculture, green markets, and farmers’ markets.

A recent study by researchers at Pennsylvania State University shows how the color of the food impacts our taste. The researchers suggest that this can have an impact on how the food and beverage industries market their products. “We used color as a conditioning mechanism because we thought it would be a semantics-free test however we still believe that [the participants] use semantics in a way,” said Molly Higgins, one of the researchers of the study.

They conducted two sets of experiments to determine how subjects associated basic tastes with colors and then focused more on the bitter taste-color association. They made sure that the colors were very different from the normally associated taste-color associations. For example, yellow is associated with a sour taste, whereas red is associated with sweetness. The paper which will be published in the January edition of Food Quality and Preference aims to focus more on the bitter taste associations.

Nutrition transition has caused an energy imbalance in our eating practices. This has resulted in a score of heart and metabolic problems that were not present a few decades back. Even though the increased sweet and salts, the beverages with great flavors and safer foods have brought many benefits, there is a need to figure out how to return to healthier, more nutrient-dense food practices.