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There has been a marked increase in unhealthy dietary patterns, a trend that has been accompanied by increasing rates of overweight, obesity, and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) worldwide. Unhealthy diets are now the leading risk factor for deaths and loss of disability-adjusted life-years, surpassing for example tobacco smoking and high blood pressure [9]. It is diets in their entirety and overall balance that are increasingly being associated with health impacts. The diet-related health impacts manifest themselves in raised risks of obesity and/or NCDs.

Poor diets are often characterized by overconsumption of specific foods or groups of foods with problematic health profiles (e.g., resulting in obesity and NCDs, including diabetes, heart disease, cancers), and tend to be shaped by unhealthy “food environments.” Food environments have been defined as the physical, economic, political, and sociocultural context in which consumers engage with the food system to make decisions about acquiring, preparing, and consuming food [9, 10]. There is ongoing articulation to focus on the interaction between people’s daily lives and activities that shape their diets [11]. Increased consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages has been singled out as a significant contributor to the obesity epidemic in recent years [12]. Overconsumption of animal products has been connected with heart disease, diabetes, and various cancers [13]. High sodium intakes are associated with higher blood pressure and hypertension [14]. Globally, 1.7 million annual deaths from cardiovascular causes have been attributed to excess sodium intake [15]. A number of recent studies suggest that high consumption of saturated fats is associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease and diabetes [16]. The negative health impacts of trans fatty acids – a type of unsaturated vegetable fat typically found in manufactured cooking oils – are now the subject of broad consensus, with legal limits and bans in Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Iceland, Hungary, Norway, and Latvia [17]. In the USA, a nationwide ban on partially hydrogenated oils – the primary dietary source of artificial trans fats – came into effect in 2018 [18]. Overall, the increasing proportion of ultraprocessed foods in diets has been identified as a driver of excess energy intake [19].

Overweight and obesity have reached epidemic levels in many countries [20, 21] and continue to increase in all regions, particularly among school-age children. In 2018, an estimated 40 million children aged under 5 years were overweight [22]. In 2016, 131 million children aged 5–9 years, 207 million adolescents, and 2 billion adults were overweight. About a third of overweight adolescents and adults and 44% of overweight children aged 5–9 years were obese [1].

According to the WHO, over the period from 2011 to 2025, the cumulative economic losses due to NCDs under a “business as usual” scenario in low- and middle-income countries could reach USD 7 trillion, as compared to an annual expenditure of USD 11.2 billion to implement a set of high-impact interventions [15].