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Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) have a broad spectrum of unfavorable chronic health conditions (1). Usually, NCDs are mentioned as these four main types of chronic diseasecardiovascular disease (heart disease, and stroke), cancer, diabetes, and chronic lung disease (1). Collectively, they impose substantial disease burden worldwide, accounting for approximately 74% of all the global deaths presently (1). However, besides these four commonly-mentioned NCDs, obesity, osteoporosis, gout, and even some gastrointestinal disorders are also within the broad concept of NCD (1). It has been well-documented that NCDs share five major risk factors: tobacco use, physical inactivity, the harmful use of alcohol, unhealthy diets, and air pollution (1,2). Fortunately, these risk factors are modifiable (1,2). Clearly, for unhealthy diets and alcohol drinking, they are eating behavior related risk factors of NCDs. Obesity, for both adults and adolescents, is a big public health problem worldwide, as it is not only a chronic condition itself but also a driving factor for the main NCDs (3). Using the most recent data from ten Eastern European countries-Belarus, Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, the Republic of Moldova, Romania, the Russian Federation, Slovakia, and Ukraine Metabolic syndrome (MetS), a complex cardio-metabolic condition, is typically defined by co-existence of at least three of the five components: abdominal obesity, raised fasting blood glucose, increased blood pressure, elevated triglyceride, and/or lowered high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (5). Evidence from nutritional epidemiological studies may be more informative for understanding associations of eating behaviors with MetS as well as its components. In the investigation, Relationship between Skipping Breakfast and Metabolic Syndrome among Adults Aged 35-74 Years: A Cross-Sectional Study in Northwest China, 2018-2020 (Yang et al), it was observed that breakfast skipping, an unhealthy eating behavior, was positively associated with MetS among adults in regional China. This study implied an easily practicable potential approach for MetS prevention, regular breakfast eating, for adults to prevent MetS.Another common main NCD is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), one of chronic respiratory diseases. Relative to classical influencing factors (e.g., tobacco smoke exposure, occupational exposure to dusts, fumes or chemicals, and indoor air pollution, etc.), eating behavior was less investigated regarding the potential association with COPD (6, 7, 8, vegetable intake was negatively linked with COPD among adults aged 40 years or above in regional China. These two studies among adults from USA and China consistently suggest that unhealthy eating behaviors may be a potentially plausible driver of COPD for adults.In addition to the four commonly-mentioned NCDs, hyperuricemia and gout are alcohol-drinking-associated chronic metabolic diseases (11), also imposing substantial disease burden globally (12,13). In the study of Impact of Alcohol Consumption on Hyperuricemia and Gout: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (Ma et al), the association of alcohol drinking with hyperuricemia and gout were systematically updated based on meta-analysis of most recent publications. Meaningfully, a significant dose-response relationship was examined in this meta-analysis, confirming the positive link between alcohol drinking and these two conditions, particularly for men. Moreover, chronic gastric disorder (CGD), a well-established risk factor for gastric cancer, is also within the broad concept of NCDs (14). Previous studies documented inconsistent findings on the relationship between vegetable consumption and the risk of CGD in China, the country with a high prevalence of CGD (15,16,17). The study, The Relationship between There is strong evidence showing that adherence to MD pattern is negatively associated with NCDs (19). Recently, using data collected in 2023 from adults aged 18 years and older in respectively, while only 18.1% and 28.9% of residents met the intake levels of meat and vegetable, separately, recommended by Chinese Nutrition Society in 2022 (20). These two studies provide an update of eating behavior among adults in the first year after COVID-19 pandemic under the context of traditional Western and Eastern food cultures, separately.For population-based healthy eating promotion, food-related broadcasting/media content is a potentially helpful option in today's society with widely spreading media-based information.It has been investigated that food-related broadcasting contents may contribute to unhealthy eating behaviors, as they can provide emotional connection and vicarious satisfaction for stimulating eating scenes (21). In the study-Association between Food-Related Media-conducted in 2024 among adults aged 20-65 years in South Korea, food-related digital content viewing was examined to be positively associated with two eating behaviors, late-night eating and food-delivery/take-out. These findings suggest that food-related broadcasting/media content may encourage unhealthy eating behaviors for adults. Moreover, it implies that exposure to food-related media should be considered as intervention approaches of healthy eating promotion campaigns.Population-based healthy eating interventions are an effective strategy for prevention of eating behavior related NCDs (22,23,24,25). However, the precise eating behavior intervention is time-dependent, population-and culture-specific, which calls for periodical surveillance/monitoring of eating behavior and NCDs, consistent and timely evaluation of eating behavior intervention effectiveness, and optimal modification of intervention approaches for target populations. This shall be a dynamically rolling and improving process of intervention, surveillance, evaluation, program modification, and re-intervention for community-based eating-related NCDs prevention campaigns. Such an intervention roadmap of population-level precise prevention of eating-related NCDs was displayed in Figure 1.The papers included in the Research Topic provided new evidence regarding the associations of eating behaviors with cardiovascular diseases, metabolic syndrome, COPD, obesity, hyperuricemia, gout, and chronic gastric disorder. Moreover, specific eating behavior (meat and vegetable intake) and pattern (Mediterranean diet) as well as association of broadcasting media with eating behaviors were also investigated. These studies add significant values to literature and have public health implications for eating behavior-associated NCD prevention.Human eating behavior is highly subject to age, time, economic status, and environment. This highlights that, for the purpose of community-based precise prevention of NCDs, continuous studies shall be encouraged on associations of specific eating behaviors and selected NCDs, surveillance of population-level eating behaviors, and effective and actionable healthy eating campaigns among economically, and culturally diverse sub-populations worldwide.Keywords: eating behavior, chronic disease, dietary pattern, nutritional epidemiology, population-based evidence To
Xu et al. (Wed,) studied this question.