'EastDiet' — a homegrown way to better health

A real-world recipe

For decades, discussions about healthy eating habits have largely revolved around the Mediterranean diet.

Rich in olive oil, nuts, whole grains, fruits, vegetables and seafood, the diet has been linked to lower risks of cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders, making it one of the most widely recommended dietary models in public health.

But China's culinary traditions, food systems and eating habits differ dramatically from those of the Mediterranean region. From the hearty stews of the northeast and the spicy cuisine of Sichuan and Chongqing to Cantonese soups and the freshwater specialties of the eastern coastal region, China's food culture is far too diverse to fit neatly into an imported framework.

If healthy eating should be grounded in everyday life, could China already have its own healthy diet?

Seeking answers, Zhu's team turned to existing data.

The study drew on the WELLChina cohort, which recruited nearly 10,000 residents from three urban districts of Hangzhou between 2016 and 2019. Researchers followed 8,931 healthy adults for an average of 6.3 years.

Rather than deciding in advance which foods were healthy, the team employed an unsupervised clustering approach, allowing patterns to emerge naturally from data based on the consumption of 22 food groups.

Two major dietary patterns surfaced. Nearly 46.8 percent of participants fell into one distinct cluster, which researchers named the East-Diet.

The pattern was characterized by higher consumption of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, dairy products and eggs; greater intake of seafood and freshwater fish; more soy products, mushrooms and starchy root vegetables such as sweet potatoes, taro and lotus root; and lower consumption of refined grains, fried foods, red meat, processed meat and alcohol.

Shi Yuwei, the paper's first author and a doctoral student at Zhejiang University, said the logic behind the EastDiet is straightforward.

"It is essentially a diet with more plant-based foods, more whole grains replacing refined staples, a greater diversity of high-quality protein sources, and less processed food and excessive red meat," Shi explained.

The pattern aligns closely with modern nutritional recommendations, yet it was not invented by nutrition scientists. "It has always existed in Chinese daily life," Zhu said.