A Global Analysis of Traditional Diet Share and Diabetes Prevalence: Quantifying the Protective Role of Cultural Food Heritage (2000–2023)

Traditional dietary patterns, reflecting centuries of cultural adaptation and culinary wisdom, are increasingly being displaced by industrialized foods worldwide. This interdisciplinary study bridges ethnographic insight with population-level statistics to quantify the share of traditional foods in national diets and examine their association with diabetes prevalence from 2000 to 2023. Using FAO Food Balance Sheets merged with World Bank indicators for GDP, education, and health, we generated 2,324 country–year observations. FAO food items were classified into twelve cultural food categories representing both traditional and modern systems. Two indices were developed: the Traditional Diet Index (TDI) the proportion of daily calories derived from cereals, pulses, roots/tubers, vegetables, and fruits and the Dietary Diversity Index (DDI), based on Shannon entropy. Ordinary least squares regression revealed a significant negative association between TDI and diabetes prevalence (β = −9.37, p = 0.006), after adjusting for income and education. Countries maintaining higher shares of traditional foods exhibited lower national diabetes rates. These findings provide robust cross-national evidence that preserving traditional food heritage is not only a cultural imperative but also a vital public health strategy for combating diabetes underscoring the critical link between culinary tradition and population well-being. The TDI framework also provides a replicable model for future cross-cultural nutrition research.