"Belgians have world's third unhealthiest eating habits"

A survey into eating habits in no fewer than 187 countries has shown that the people of Belgium have some of the unhealthiest eating habits in the world. The people of Africa dominate the Top 10 of countries with the healthiest eating habits.

Belgium features on third position in the league table of countries with unhealthy eating habits. Only Armenia and Hungary fare worse. Belgium occurs just ahead of the USA, Russia, Iceland, Latvia, Brazil, Columbia and Australia that make up the Top 10.

African countries have the healthiest eating habits: Chad, Sierra Leone and Mali top the list of countries with healthy eating habits, a list dominated by African nations.

The study was carried out between 1990 and 2010. Fumiaki Imamura of Cambridge University, who headed the research, says Belgium performs so badly because fast food is so readily available and because national delicacies including beer, chocolate and waffles are calorie bombs with large amounts of calories. The daily Het Laatste Nieuws that spoke with Fumiaki Imamura says he did not raise the subject of our fourth national product: mayo and chips.

The survey is based on 325 studies and data from the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation relating to 187 countries. It was carried out at Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit at Cambridge University. The findings are published in The Lancet Global Health.

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