Dietary habits of the Italian population across the last 30 years: main features and room for improvement

Dietary habits and alcohol consumption, jointly, are the behavioural risk factors causing the most DALYs and deaths among Italians. Describing such dietary patterns is crucial for designing effective strategies to reduce mortality. Our aim is to define the “typical Italian diet” and compare it with some “healthy diets” in terms of estimated life expectancy. We estimated the gender-specific average daily intake of 19 food groups based on ten observational studies reporting consumption data of the Italian population during the last three decades. We updated the Food4HealthyLife predictive model, which estimates the life expectancy of a population based on the reported daily intake of 15 food groups. This model combines age-specific mortality rates with hazard and risk ratios taken from meta-analyses. This allowed to quantify the life expectancy gain associated with switching from typical Italian diet to four diets: F4HL optimal, EAT Lancet, CREA guidelines, and IIS Mediterranean guidelines. We estimate that switching from typical to F4HL optimal diet for 40-year-old Italian men and women results in a 6.4 and 7.7-year gain in life expectancy, respectively. The largest gains are expected from an increased consumption of whole grains, legumes, and nuts. Switching to EAT Lancet, CREA, and Mediterranean guidelines, would result in a gain between 3.4 and 5.8 years of life expectancy. In conclusion, the Italian population would significantly benefit from switching towards the four proposed healthy diets. The food groups presenting most room for improvement are grains, legumes, and nuts, while fruit consumption is already close to the desirable intake.