What we aren't eating may actually be bad for our health according to CNN. You have heard that too much red meat, sugars, salt and trans fats were making us ill, but according to CNN, these are minor risks. CNN reviewed a multi country study by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation which looked at 15 dietary risk factors and their effect on death or disability. They found that as far as risk factors go, other than salt, red meat and trans fats were actually at the low end of the spectrum of foods that adversely affect our health. What they did find out was that the risks were more markedly created by what we were not regularly eating in our diets. According to CNN, more than half of all global diet-related deaths in 2017 were due to just three risk factors: eating too much salt, not enough whole grains and not enough fruit. These risks held true regardless of socioeconomic class in the countries that they studied. The experts can be and often are wrong. This study challenges conventional wisdom regarding what belongs in a healthy diet. Read more about this fascinating study below. What we aren't eating is killing us, global study finds By Sandee LaMotte, CNN Wed April 3, 2019 Which risk factor is responsible for more deaths around the world than any other? Not smoking. Not even high blood pressure. It's a poor diet. "In many countries, poor diet now causes more deaths than tobacco smoking and high blood pressure," said Ashkan Afshin, an assistant professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. And it's not just that people are choosing unhealthy options such as red meat and sugary sodas. Just as critical, said Afshin, the lead author of a 27-year global diet analysis published Wednesday in the journal the Lancet, is the lack of healthy foods in our diets, along with high levels of salt. "While traditionally all the conversation about healthy diet has been focused on lowering the intake of unhealthy food, in this study, we have shown that, at the population level, a low intake of healthy foods is the more important factor, rather than the high intake of unhealthy foods," he said. Read more