Nutrition, Health and Dietary Trends

The Global Burden Disease (GBD), the largest comparative analysis of the 79 leading risk factors, confirms that poor nutrition is the single most important contributor to the burden of premature morbidity and mortality, accounting for more than 10% of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) especially from cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. At the same time, nutrition remains the cornerstone of therapy for the prevention and management of chronic diseases. Dietary pattern-based clinical practice guidelines have provided clinicians, patients, and the public with a number of evidence-based options for the prevention and management of chronic diseases. The Mediterranean Diet is one of the dietary patterns that has been more extensively evaluated and strong evidence from observational and intervention studies has accumulated on its health benefits for primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease and other major chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cancer and probably cognitive impairment. Nutrition could affect diet-induced inflammation, and the evolution of western diets has resulted in an increase of this inflammatory background signature, associated with a progressively increasing rate of chronic degenerative conditions. Several studies are in progress to evaluate the effect of anti-inflammatory interventions in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes. The data emerging indicates that dose and assessment of markers of reduced diet-induced inflammation may be important to assess potential benefit and tailor intervention guidelines