Review of the Relationship between Food Insecurity (Nutrients Imbalance) and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDS)

The Glob today is facing an ‘‘epidemic’’ of diet-related non-communicable diseases (DR-NCDs), along with widely prevalent under-nutrition resulting in substantial socioeconomic burden. The aim of this paper is to review the relationship between nutrients and energy metabolism and implications for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in different parts of the world’s so as to understand optimal choices for healthy diets for the prevention of NCDs. The literature search was carried out in PubMed and Google Scholar search up to December 2019. A manual search for all other references, national and medical databases was also carried out. A decreasing intake of coarse cereals, pulses, fruits and vegetables, an increasing intake of meat products and salt, coupled with declining levels of physical activity due to rapid urbanization have resulted in escalating levels of obesity, atherogenic dyslipidemia, subclinical inflammation, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and coronary heart disease in different parts of the world. Studies also suggest that adverse perinatal events due to maternal nutritional deprivation may cause low-birth weight infants, which, coupled with early childhood ‘‘catch-up growth’’, leads to obesity in early childhood, thus predisposing to NCDs later in life. In view of rapidly increasingly imbalanced diets, a multisectoral preventive approach is needed to provide balanced diets to pregnant women, children and adults, and to maintain a normal body weight from childhood onwards, to prevent the escalation of DR-NCDs. Keywords: obesity, overweight, diabetes, coronary heart disease, diet, energy metabolism, metabolic syndrome