The Mediterranean diet gets plenty of attention for its health benefits, but it isn't the only traditional way of eating worth exploring. From fresh vegetables and tofu to fish and seasonal fruits, the foods that have long been part of everyday meals in parts of China may also have something to teach us about healthy eating.
A new study published in The Innovation Nutrition found that Chinese adults whose diets most closely resembled traditional eating patterns from the country's eastern and southeastern coastal regions were less likely to have obesity or high blood pressure. The findings also highlight an often-overlooked part of nutrition advice: Healthy eating may be easier to maintain when it builds on foods people already know and enjoy.
Researchers focused on a region that includes Shanghai and the provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Guangdong and Fujian. While food traditions vary across these areas, many emphasize a wide variety of vegetables, seasonal fruits, seafood, poultry and soy foods, with moderate amounts of cooking oil and salt.
Rather than introduce an entirely new eating plan, researchers wanted to see whether these familiar food traditions could provide a foundation for healthier dietary recommendations.
They examined information from nearly 55,000 Chinese adults and developed a 10-point score based on the foods people ate, the variety in their diets and how much oil and salt they consumed.
People with the highest scores had 24% lower odds of obesity, 22% lower odds of excess abdominal fat and 21% lower odds of high blood pressure compared with those with the lowest scores. The differences remained after accounting for factors such as age, income, smoking and physical activity.
The researchers also looked at a separate group of more than 28,000 Chinese adults, drawing on dietary and health information collected over nearly three decades.
In that group, people whose eating habits most closely matched the Eastern Healthy Diet, as the researchers named it, had a 15% lower risk of developing obesity. There were also signs of lower risks of high blood pressure and premature death, although those findings were less certain.
These results don't prove that following the diet prevents disease or helps people live longer. Both studies examined people's existing eating habits rather than asking them to follow a particular diet, so other lifestyle differences may have influenced the findings.
Still, the research offers an interesting reminder that healthy eating can take many forms.
The Eastern Healthy Diet shares several features with other well-studied eating patterns. Vegetables and fruits provide fiber and essential nutrients, while fish, poultry and soy foods offer different sources of protein. Variety and moderate salt intake are also common themes in nutrition guidance.
As previous research examining different healthy diets has suggested, there's more than one way to build a nutritious diet.
What makes this approach different is its connection to local food traditions. For someone who regularly eats tofu, steamed fish and seasonal vegetables, advice built around those foods may be more practical than recommendations centered on unfamiliar ingredients.
After all, what we eat isn't determined by nutrition alone. Family traditions, culture, cost and availability all shape our food choices.
The study focused on Chinese adults, so it's not yet clear whether the same results would be seen in other populations. But the researchers see the Eastern Healthy Diet as a way to bring modern nutrition guidance together with the foods and cooking traditions already familiar to millions of people.
The study was supported by China's National Nutrition Science Research Fund and Ministry of Finance. Co-author Xiang Gao serves on the editorial board of The Innovation Nutrition but was excluded from the paper's review and publication decisions.