Diet Scores and Heart Deaths: What Country Food Data Reveals

Scientists studied food supplies across 148 countries. Every country had more than one million people. They used food information from the year 2010. The goal was to see if national eating habits connect to heart disease deaths over time.

They checked six different diet quality scores. These included DASH, AHEI, Mediterranean, Japanese, planetary health, and a diversity index. Then they followed heart disease deaths from 2010 through 2021.

Only two scores showed a clear link. Higher DASH and AHEI scores went with fewer deaths from ischemic heart disease. The other four scores did not show a significant connection.

The effect sizes were small but notable. For DASH, the ratio was 0.914 per standard deviation increase. For AHEI, it was 0.908. Both ranges suggested the link was real.

Researchers also compared how well each model fit the data. DASH ranked slightly higher than AHEI. But the difference between them was not statistically significant. So both scores paint a similar picture of diet and heart health.