The Western pattern diet, also called Western dietary pattern or the meat-sweet diet, is a dietary habit

Diet (nutrition)

In nutrition, diet is the sum of food consumed by a person or other organism. Dietary habits are the habitual decisions an individual or culture makes when choosing what foods to eat. With the word diet, it is often implied the use of specific intake of nutrition for health or weight-management...

 chosen by many people in developed countries, and increasingly in developing countries. It is characterized by high intakes of red meat

Red meat

Red meat in traditional culinary terminology is meat which is red when raw and not white when cooked. In the nutritional sciences, red meat includes all mammal meat. Red meat includes the meat of most adult mammals and some fowl ....

, sugary dessert

Dessert

In cultures around the world, dessert is a course that typically comes at the end of a meal, usually consisting of sweet food. The word comes from the French language as dessert and this from Old French desservir, "to clear the table" and "to serve." Common Western desserts include cakes, biscuits,...

s, high-fat foods, and refined grains. It also typically contains high-fat dairy product

Dairy product

Dairy products are generally defined as foods produced from cow's or domestic buffalo's milk. They are usually high-energy-yielding food products. A production plant for such processing is called a dairy or a dairy factory. Raw milk for processing comes mainly from cows, and, to a lesser extent,...

s, high-sugar drinks, and egg

Egg (food)

Eggs are laid by females of many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish, and have probably been eaten by mankind for millennia. Bird and reptile eggs consist of a protective eggshell, albumen , and vitellus , contained within various thin membranes...

s.

The term is used to describe this pattern of diet in medical literature, regardless of where the diet is found, and is often contrasted with the "prudent" diet, which has higher levels of fruits, vegetables, whole-grain foods, poultry and fish. Other dietary patterns described in the medical research include "drinker" and "meat-eater" patterns. Because of the variability in diets, individuals are usually classified not as simply "following" or "not following" a given diet, but instead by ranking them according to how closely their diets line up with each pattern in turn. The researchers then compare the outcomes between the group that most closely follows a given pattern to the group that least closely follows a given pattern.

Medical effects

Compared to the "prudent" diet, the Western pattern diet, based on epidemiological studies of Westerners, is positively correlated with an elevated incidence of obesity

Obesity

Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat has accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health, leading to reduced life expectancy and/or increased health problems...

, death from heart disease, cancer (especially colon cancer), and other 'Western pattern diet' related diseases.

Standard American Diet

The "Standard American Diet" (S.A.D.) is a similar term, specifically used to denigrate what some authors say is the stereotypical diet of Americans.

See also

• Fast food
  Fast food
  Fast food is the term given to food that can be prepared and served very quickly. While any meal with low preparation time can be considered to be fast food, typically the term refers to food sold in a restaurant or store with preheated or precooked ingredients, and served to the customer in a...
  
  
• Junk food
  Junk food
  Junk food is an informal term applied to some foods that are perceived to have little or no nutritional value ; to products with nutritional value, but which also have ingredients considered unhealthy when regularly eaten; or to those considered unhealthy to consume at all...
  
  
• European cuisine
  European cuisine
  European cuisine, or alternatively Western cuisine, is a generalised term collectively referring to the cuisines of Europe and other Western countries...
  
   (also called Western cuisine)
• Mediterranean diet
  Mediterranean diet
  The Mediterranean diet is a modern nutritional recommendation inspired by the traditional dietary patterns of southern Italy, Crete and much of the rest of Greece in the 1960s....
  
  
• Healthy diet
  Healthy diet
  A healthy diet is one that helps maintain or improve general health. It is important for lowering many chronic health risks, such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and cancer. A healthy diet involves consuming appropriate amounts of all essential nutrients and an adequate amount of...
  
  
• Nutritional gatekeeper
  Nutritional gatekeeper
  Nutritional gatekeeper has been used to refer to the person in a household who typically makes the purchasing and preparation decisions related to food. Nutritional gatekeepers can be a parent, grandparent, sibling, or caregiver...