Extreme Dietary Gaps Reveal Health Disparities in the U.S.

As the United States continues to make strides towards healthier dietary choices, recent findings show that overall, food quality remains poor, with huge disparities among socioeconomic and racial/ethnic groups.

"The study provides the most direct evidence to date that the extensive efforts by many groups and individuals to improve U.S. dietary quality are having some payoff, but it also indicates that these efforts need to be expanded," said Dong Wang, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in the Department of Nutrition at HSPH, in a news release. 

For their findings, the researchers decided to investigate recent trends in dietary quality throughout the country. They also investigated certain trends among different socioeconomic subgroups.

Researchers evaluated data from a nationally representative sample of 29,124 adults aged 20-85 from the U.S. 1999-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. They also examined dietary quality over time using the Alternate Healthy Eating Index 2010 (AHEI-2010), which rates dietary quality on a score of 0 to 110 (with higher scores indicating healthier diets), and which strongly predicts major chronic disease. Lastly, they used another dietary quality index, the Healthy Eating Index 2010.

Findings revealed that the average AHEI-2010 score increased from 39.9 in 1999-2000 to 46.8 in 2009-2010, with a great majority of these gains coming from reduced consumption of trans fats.

However, results also showed that those of higher socioeconomic status had healthier diets, while others suffered. Furthermore, this gap increased more from 1999 to 2010, which researchers believe may have to do with lack of financial resources and understanding of healthy dietary habits.

More information regarding the findings can be seen via JAMA Internal Medicine.