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Unsafe Food Kills Hundreds of Millions of People Every Year


According to the WHO, nearly one in ten people get sick from food every year. Looking into Asia, 125 million people suffer from foodborne illness each year, and more than 50,000 of them die. Forty-million of the population who suffer from foodborne illness are children under the age of five, among them, 7,000 die each year. Although there are low numbers of death by foodborne illnesses or food poisoning in Taiwan, we shouldn’t forget about chronic diseases! There’s a slang saying, "Illness finds its way in by the mouth." So, what chronic diseases are related to bad eating habits?

Knowing how many people die and why they die each year is one of the most critical ways to assess the effectiveness of a country's health system and how the disease affects its people. Three out of the top ten causes of death both worldwide and within Taiwan are deeply related to food choices. This is a food safety issue. Food safety is about making sure that people can have safe and healthy food to consume, that people won’t get ill or toxic by eating.

Eliminate individual’s bad habits and hobbies, just simply explore the relationship between food and diseases, consuming too much or too little of certain foods or ingredients can cause death from heart disease, stroke (cerebrovascular disease, high blood pressure), or diabetes. I separated the ingredients that are usually labeled on the nutrition facts panel into two categories: “the positive ones and the negatives ones.” However, this is only suggesting that intaking less of the "negative" ingredients would be more beneficial to health.


 Under the influence of modern food culture, people temp to consume more negative ingredients. For instance, processed meat product which contains too much sodium according to %DV, steak or hamburger with red meat which is high in fat, or drinks with a high amount of sugar. Taiwanese, in particular, is deeply attracted by high-calorie sugary drinks like boba milk tea.

Consuming more food with "positive ingredients" and less food with "negative ingredients" can significantly reduce the risk of getting diseases from eating.

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