Non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory disease and diabetes represent a significant worldwide health and economic challenge (WHO, 2023). Modifiable lifestyle factors such as diet, physical activity, alcohol use, smoking status and sleep have a key role in reducing the occurrence of these diseases. Diet specifically has a prominent influence on non-communicable disease risk factors such as overweight/obesity, blood pressure and blood glucose concentrations (Kraemer et al., 2016). Research evaluating dietary patterns such as the Mediterranean diet to improve the health and wellbeing of the population are on the rise (Guasch!Ferré et al., 2021), but some dietary patterns, such as the Eatwell Guide (the UK dietary guidelines), have received considerably less attention in the literature. Research is required to identify optimal dietary (and other) lifestyle behaviours in the prevention of disease.
This project aims to use the UK biobank dataset to evaluate the effect of diet and other modifiable lifestyle factors on disease risk. We propose to use dietary intake data from the UK biobank dataset to quantify intake of specific foods/nutrients and to assess overall adherence to different dietary patterns. We also propose to quantify other modifiable lifestyle factors such as physical activity, smoking status, alcohol use and sleep. These data will be used to assess associations with outcomes related to health and disease in this cohort. These outcomes include, but are not limited to obesity, metabolic diseases, cardiovascular disease and/or neurodegenerative diseases. Findings from this project will provide evidence to inform/refine public health policy and practice regarding optimal dietary (and other) lifestyle behaviours. These findings may contribute to a reduction in disease incidence and improve population health.
We propose to complete this project in 36 months.