Dietary health of medical workers: who’s taking care of it?

Abstract

HepatoBiliary Surg Nutr 2021;10(2):232-234 | http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/hbsn-2021-9 The World Health Organization has suggested that people should follow these four rules of maintaining healthy eating habits, a tobacco-free lifestyle, regular physical activities, and an environment for social and emotional well-being, all of which constitutes a healthy lifestyle. Among them, a healthy diet plays the most important role. It has been well-established that healthy eating habits not only meet one’s nutritional needs, but also lower one’s risk of having nutrition-related chronic non-communicable diseases. According to the “Report on Chinese Residents’ Chronic Diseases and Nutrition” issued by the State Council in December 2020 (1), the chronic diseases were the leading causes of national mortality, accounting for 88.5% of the total deaths in China in 2019. Herein, the cerebrovascular diseases, cancer and chronic respiratory diseases were related to lethality, altogether accounting for 80.7% of the total mortality. What’s worse, there is a tendency towards an increase in the prevalence of such chronic diseases in the Chinese people in the next few decades, mainly because of two reasons. For one thing, many Chinese people still live an unhealthy life for their imbalanced diet with excessive consumption of fat, oil, sodium, and insufficient intake of fruits, beans, and dairy products. For another thing, the rising incidence of obesity in China directly leads to increased prevalence of the chronic diseases, too. It has been showed that the rate of overweight or obesity was over 50% in adults, 19% in children under 6 and 10.4% in children or adolescents aged 6–17, respectively. In correspondence with the rise in obesity/overweight incidence, there is an increased prevalence of hypertension, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cancer in 2019, higher than those in 2015. To tackle with these serious issues, the “Healthy China 2030” initiative has set a comprehensive strategic plan, with implementation of crucial health-and-nutrition-related policy, including health knowledge popularization, promotion of a balanced diet as well as prevention and control of major chronic diseases (2). Healthcare workers play a key role in practicing the “Healthy China 2030” initiative and reducing the burden of chronic diseases. However, due to the heavy workloads, stressful working environment, and irregular work schedules, many healthcare workers often sacrificed their own physical and emotional needs, in an effort to provide care for the patients. Meituan (food delivery company) has released the “Chinese Doctor Diet Report 2020”, which showed that more than 7 million doctors have placed over 170 million orders for take-out foods in China, just in the first half of 2020 (3). Except for eating junk foods instead of swapping for a healthy diet, some other unhealthy behaviors also have impact on people’s health, such as skipping breakfast, lacking cereals, fruits, and dairy products in the meals, and consuming too much meat and poultry. Among doctors with various background, those working in the emergency room and ICU wards had a greater tendency of being afflicted by an unhealthy diet (4). The improper diet structure is closely correlated with the risk of developing chronic diseases. The “China Cardiovascular Health and Disease Report 2019” (5) pointed out that cardiovascular disease was ranked as the leading cause of death; however, 2/3 of major coronary events and 2/5 of acute ischemic stroke could be prevented through adherence to healthy lifestyle. Through a risk attribution analysis, the 2010–2012 Chinese Nutrition and Health Survey found that (6) most cases of cardiovascular death were attributed to excessive sodium intake (>2.0 g/d) (17.3%), identified as the main contributing factor. Besides, the cases were also attributed to low fruits intake (<300.0 g/d) (11.5%), low omega-3 fatty acids intake (<250.0 mg/d) (9.7%), low nuts ingestion (<250.0 mg/d) Editorial