Dietary patterns and the risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases, asthma, and neurodegenerative diseases

ABSTRACT

Diet and lifestyle play a significant role in the development chronic diseases; however the full complexity of this relationship is not yet understood. Dietary pattern investigation, which reflects the complexity of dietary intake, has emerged as an alternative and complementary approach for examining the association between diet and chronic diseases. Literature on this association has largely focused on individual nutrients, with conflicting outcomes, but individuals consume a combination of foods from many groups that form dietary patterns. Our objective was to systematically review the current findings on the effects of dietary patterns on chronic diseases. In this review, we describe and discuss the relationships between dietary patterns, such as the Mediterranean, the Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension, Prudent, Seventh-day Adventists, and Western, with risk of obesity, type-2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases, asthma, and neurodegenearive diseases. Evidence is increasing from both observational and clinical studies that plant-based dietary patterns, which are rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, are valuable in preventing various chronic diseases, whereas a diet high in red and processed meat, refined grains and added sugar seems to increase said risk. Dietary pattern analysis might be especially valuable to the development and evaluation of food-based dietary guidelines.

KEYWORDS:

• Mediterranean diet
• DASH diet
• prudent diet
• seventh-day adventists diet
• western diet

Funding

This study was supported in part by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competivity (AGL2016- 75329-R), Fundació Marato de TV3, and the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, ISCIII (CIBERobn-CB06/03, PI13/02184 and, PI 16/00383, FIS, Spain.). The CIBEROBN is an initiative of the ISCIII, Spain. A. M.-R. thanks the “Juan de la Cierva” postdoctoral program (JCI-2012-13463) from MEC (Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad). The MICINN, MEC and ISCIII had no role in the design, analysis, or writing of this article.

Declaration of interest

Dr. Lamuela-Raventos reports serving on the board of and receiving lecture fees from Research Foundation on Wine and Nutrition (FIVIN); receiving lecture fees from Cerveceros de España; and receiving lecture fees and travel support from PepsiCo. Dr. Estruch reports serving on the board of and receiving lecture fees from the FIVIN; serving on the boards of the Beer and Health Foundation and the European Foundation for Alcohol Research (ERAB); receiving lecture fees from Cerveceros de España and Sanofi-Aventis; and receiving grant support through his institution from Novartis. No other potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported. The founding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results.

Author contributions

A. M.-R., R.K., R.M.L.-R., and R.E. interpreted data and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the writing and revision of the manuscript and approval of the final version to be published.