dietary factors, such as sugar-sweetened beverages, which have been the target of dietary policies in several countries.38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43 Additionally, to improve the consistency of definitions of dietary risk factors across surveys, we made a systematic effort to obtain and re-extract individual-level data from nutrition surveys. To make the current level of intake and optimal level of intake more comparable, we used the absolute level of intake (rather than the intake standardised to 2000 kcal per day) as the primary exposure in GBD 2016. We also corrected our estimated daily intake of each individual dietary factor for within-person variation and characterised the usual intake at the population level. Finally, given the differences in the health effects and patterns of intake for legumes and vegetables, we estimated the burden of disease attributable to low intake of legumes and low intake of vegetables separately.
