Modelling the impact of a healthy diet on cardiovascular disease and cancer mortality.

Background: Quantifying the potential health benefits of improvements in the nutritional quality of the average diet of a population would provide evidence for resource allocation between population-level interventions aimed at reducing chronic disease.

Methods: A model was built linking consumption of food components with biological risk factors (blood pressure, serum cholesterol and obesity) and subsequent mortality from coronary heart disease, stroke and cancer. Meta-analyses of individual-level studies that quantified the RR of increased consumption/increased risk factor level on disease outcomes were used to build the model.