Nutrition transition in China has a strong impact on dietary quality and health of Chinese consumers. This study developed the diet quality divergence Index (DQD), the divergence between real food consumption and the Chinese food pagoda 2016 (CFP), to measure the quality of diet in China. Using four waves of data (2004, 2006, 2009, and 2011) from China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), this study shed light on the transition of diet quality for Chinese residents. Results indicate that the DQD generally decreased and Chinese diet quality improved during 2004–2011. The divergence was mainly caused by over-consumption of legumes and nuts, and under-consumption of milk and milk products. Rising income and urbanization were positively correlated with diet quality for the people with low DQD. However, both of them had negative impacts on diet quality for those with high DQD. Females and rural residents held a lower DQD than their counterparts. The results also revealed that healthy food preference, education, dining at home, household size, proportions of teens (6–17) and elders (over 64) in the families are positively correlated with Chinese diet quality. However, labor intensity, frequency of drinking alcohol, and smoking have negative impacts on diet quality. Moreover, higher DQD was found to be associated with increasing risks of overweight/obesity. Therefore, we suggest national healthy policies should pay more attention to nutrition education. It is also necessary to focus on populations with poor diet quality and to adopt measures to control drinking alcohol and smoking.

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Objectives: To evaluate various diet quality indices and to estimate their associations with major non-communicable diseases-NCDs (i.e., diabetes mellitus-DM and myocardial infarction-MI) and risk for overweight-OW. Design: Four dietary diversity indices (namely count index-Count, dietary diversity index-DDS, berry index-BI, and entropy index-EI) and three Chinese dietary guideline-based indices (namely China healthy diet index, Chinese food pagoda score, and diet quality divergence index) were employed to evaluate Chinese diet quality. DM, MI and OW were used as diet-related health indicators. Logit regressions were employed to unveil the associations between diet quality indices and NCDs and risk for OW. The relationships between diet quality indices and daily energy intakes were checked with ordinary least squares linear regressions. Setting: Four recent waves (2004, 2006, 2009, 2011) of longitudinal individual data from China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). Participants: Chinese Adults (aged 18-64) from 12 provinces were included in the analysis (n=30350). Results: Count, BI, and EI were positively associated with higher OW risk and daily energy intakes. As dietary guideline-based indices got better, people were exposed to lower DM and OW risks and got lower daily energy intakes. Finally, dietary guideline-based indices properly revealed the expected relationships that high-quality diets would reduce NCDs and risk for OW, while high diversity indices were usually correlated with over-nutrition and high risks. Conclusions: Increasing diversity of the diet does not necessarily improve the nutrition and health. Dietary guideline-based indices are more robust than dietary diversity indices, thus, they should be highly recommended when evaluating diet quality.

Given the environmental and socioeconomic challenges of monoculture rubber plantation, FAO emphasized the use and protection of crop diversity which also has been proposed for sustainable development of rubber industry in Thailand. But the adoption of such technology is relatively low that makes rubber crop diversity highly controversy in Thailand. With 2,159 observations at rubber household level collected in 2012–2014, present study investigated the impacts of crop diversity adoption on rubber farmers’ net income in Thailand with use of propensity score matching models. The study found that rubber crop diversity adoption had statistically significant negative impacts on the net income of rubber farmers. And the rubber crop diversity farmers got lower net income of [-11,785.29, -10,887.21] baht per person than monoculture rubber farmers. As the rubber crop diversity system usually grants environmental benefits to the local eco-systems which are exactly the positive externalities and non-rewarded in the market, more incentives and supports are necessary to steam up rubber crop diversity adoption and the sustainability of rubber industry in Thailand.