SEARCHNARRATIVE_REVIEWnutrition, public_health

narrative_review·nutrition, public_health, epidemiology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, psychiatry·PMC10054585

Global Scientific Trends on Healthy Eating from 2002 to 2021: A Bibliometric and Visualized Analysis

Nutrients · 5 authors, 5 centres

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TL;DR

This bibliometric analysis of 12,442 publications on healthy eating from 2002 to 2021 reveals a 25-fold increase in research output, with the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia as leading contributors. Four major research themes emerged: food insecurity in youth, the Mediterranean diet as a sustainable model, overall lifestyle optimization via e-health, and challenges of obesity management including orthorexia nervosa. The findings provide a framework for future research and policy to address the interconnected challenges of population health, food security, and environmental sustainability.

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**Background:** The paper addresses the global population–environment–health trilemma driven by dietary changes. Agriculture accounts for over 30% of total greenhouse gas emissions, while current dietary trends are raising the incidence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which account for up to 72% of worldwide mortality. Dietary factors are a leading risk among NCDs for death in adults (22%). Despite healthy eating being a modifiable factor that could alleviate these challenges, research in this field had not been systematically reviewed. This bibliometric study aimed to explore the evolution of healthy eating research over the past two decades, identify current conceptions, examine values and gaps, and predict research trends.

**Methods:** The Web of Science (WoS) core collection was searched for publications between 1 January 2002 and 31 December 2021 using the topic search strategy: TS = (“Healthy Eating” or “Healthy Diet*” or “Healthy Nutrition” or “Prudent Diet*”). Only English-language articles were included. Searches and downloads were performed on 5 February 2022. VOSviewer1.6.18 was used to visualize evolution paths, distribution structures, collaboration patterns, and research frontiers through co-occurrence network maps, overlay maps, and co-authorship analysis. Descriptive analyses of publication years, journals, countries/regions, institutions, authors, and references were also performed.

**Key Results:** A total of 12,442 publications were identified. Annual publications increased from 71 in 2002 to 1764 in 2021, representing approximately a 25-fold increase. A total of 6637 articles (53.34% of total) were published from 2017 to 2021. Globally, 153 countries/regions contributed to this research. Three countries published over 1000 articles, contributing 60.5% of total publications: the United States (4822 counts, 129,710 citations), the United Kingdom (1418 counts, 48,000 citations), and Australia (1284 counts, 33,901 citations). A total of 1926 journals published articles on this topic; the top 10 journals accounted for 24.88% of total publications. The most productive journal was Nutrients (678), followed by Public Health Nutrition (475) and Appetite (399). The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition ranked first in impact factor (7.047) and citation frequency (12,121). Among 9943 institutions, Harvard University published the most (477), followed by Deakin University (271) and the University of Minnesota (228). A total of 49,761 researchers contributed; Hu, Frank B. was the most productive author (75 publications, 7526 citations), followed by Willett, Walter C. (65 publications, 4795 citations). Among 15,843 keywords, the top five high-frequency keywords (excluding “healthy eating”) were diet (1173 counts), obesity (1004 counts), nutrition (939 counts), physical activity (896 counts), and dietary quality (816 counts). The co-occurrence network formed four clusters: (1) food insecurity and healthy eating in youth, (2) the Mediterranean diet and sustainability, (3) overall lifestyle optimization and e-health, and (4) challenges of healthy eating against obesity. Keywords with the latest average publication year included COVID-19 (2020.76), orthorexia nervosa (2019.08), sustainability (2019.01), microbiota (2018.40), food insecurity (2018.25), and e-health (2018.17).

**Clinical Implications:** The analysis reveals that healthy eating research is at an early stage of fast development, with most academic groups being passers or beginners. The four identified clusters highlight key areas for clinical and public health intervention: addressing food insecurity in youth to prevent NCDs across generations, promoting the Mediterranean diet as a sustainable and culturally acceptable model, integrating e-health technologies for personalized lifestyle optimization, and developing multidisciplinary approaches to obesity management that avoid extreme diets and orthorexia nervosa. The findings suggest that future research should focus on healthy dietary patterns and clinical applications of healthy eating, with enhanced global collaboration needed to expand research scale and scope.

STUDY TYPE

narrative_review

SPECIALTY

nutrition

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AI pipeline

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88% · B

ORIGINAL PAPER

PMC10054585

Global Scientific Trends on Healthy Eating from 2002 to 2021: A Bibliometric and Visualized Analysis

Nutrients

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ABSTRACT

Abstract Diet has been recognized as a vital risk factor for non-communicable diseases (NCDs), climate changes, and increasing population, which has been reflected by a rapidly growing body of the literature related to healthy eating. To reveal a panorama of the topics related to healthy eating, this study aimed to characterize and visualize the knowledge structure, hotspots, and trends in this field over the past two decades through bibliometric analyses. Publications related to healthy eating between 1 January 2002 and 31 December 2021 were retrieved and extracted from the Web of Science database. The characteristics of articles including publication years, journals, authors, institutions, countries/regions, references, and keywords were assessed. The analyses on co-authorship, co-occurrence, and co-citation were performed and network visualization maps were constructed by VOSviewer. Major subdomains identified by bibliometrics were further discussed and analyzed. A total of 12,442 articles on healthy eating were identified. Over the past two decades, the annual global publications increased from 71 to 1764, showing a nearly 25-fold growth. The journal Nutrients published the most articles and The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition possessed the highest citations. The United States, Harvard University, and Hu, Frank B. were identified as the most productive and influential country, institution, and author, respectively. The co-occurrence cluster analysis of the top 100 keywords formed four clusters: (1) the food insecurity environment for youths highlighting the necessity and significance of implementing healthy eating in early life; (2) sustainable advantages of the Mediterranean diet; (3) the importance of an overall healthy lifestyle optimization leveraged by eHealth; (4) the challenges during the course of healthy eating against obesity, which are prominent in reflecting the knowledge structure, hotspots, and trends. Moreover, COVID-19, orthorexia nervosa, sustainability, microbiota, food insecurity, and e-health are identified keywords that represented the latest high-frequency keywords and indicated the emerging frontiers of healthy eating. This study indicates that the number of publications on healthy eating will increase in the future and that healthy dietary patterns and clinical applications of healthy eating will be the next hotspots in this research field. Keywords: bibliometrics, VOSviewer, healthy eating, global trend, sustainability

CITATION EXPORT

Te Fang, Hongyi Cao, Yue Wang et al.. Global Scientific Trends on Healthy Eating from 2002 to 2021: A Bibliometric and Visualized Analysis. Nutrients. (2023). https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15061461

AUTHORS

5 · 5 CENTRES

Te Fang, Hongyi Cao, Yue Wang, Yang Gong, Zhongqing Wang

1Department of Anesthesiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang 110001, China
2Department of Pathology, College of Basic Medical Science, China Medical University, Shenyang 110001, China; [email protected]
3Department of Clinical Nutrition, The First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang 110001, China
4School of Biomedical Informatics, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA
5Department of Information Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, No.155, Nanjing Street, Heping District, Shenyang 110001, China