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A Bad Diet Is More Deadly Than Smoking or High Blood Pressure

What you put on your plate can play a serious role in how likely you are to die before your time: According to a new study in the Lancet, a poor diet is actually the leading cause of death worldwide, contributing to more of them than conventional risk factors like tobacco use and high blood pressure.

In the study, researchers analyzed food consumption habits of adults ages 25 and older from 1990 to 2017 in 195 countries and compared how that affected their chances of premature death.

They found that in 2017, 11 million deaths—or 22 percent—worldwide were caused by poor diet. More specifically? Of these deaths, 9.5 million were due to cardiovascular disease, over 900,000 to diet-related cancers, over 330,000 to diabetes, and over 136,000 to kidney diseases.

On the other hand, more commonly known risk factors like high blood pressure and tobacco use was linked to 10.4 million and 8 million deaths, respectively. Researchers also found that poor diet is linked to more years lived with disability, too.