The health state of the Hungarian population is among the worst in Europe. Although they have many diseases and illnesses like any other country, two stood out the most. The two diseases that stood out the most just happen to be disease incidences that have relation to food consumption and eating habits.
Europe is the heaviest drinking region in the world in terms of the occurrence of alcohol consumption, according to the WHO (World Health Organization) report ’European Status Report on Alcohol and Health 2010. Over 20% of the European population aged ≥15 reported heavy episodic drinking (defined as five or more drinks on one occasion, or 50g alcohol) at least once a week. The legal drinking age in Hungary is 18 years old and you would need to be 16 years old to enter into any bar. You could just imagine all the health risk factors caused by this law alone. This brings up the first disease in Hungary that is related to food consumption and eating habits; Liver Disease. The incidence and prevalence of two conditions, cirrhosis and primary liver cancer, are key to understanding the burden of liver disease. The four leading causes of cirrhosis and primary liver cancer in Europe are harmful alcohol consumption, viral hepatitis B and C and metabolic syndromes related to overweight and obesity. Alcohol consumption and metabolic syndromes related to overweight and obesity are directly related to food consumption.
According to WHO (World Health Organization), liver cirrhosis accounted for 1.8% of all deaths in Europe (using WHO’s wide geographical definition), causing around 170,000 deaths per year with the level of liver cirrhosis mortality in south-eastern Europe (especially in Hungary and Moldova). Alcohol has long been identified as the strongest risk factor for liver cirrhosis. In fact, cirrhosis mortality has traditionally been used as a valid indicator for tracing the health consequences of alcohol abuse. Radical increases in liver cirrhosis mortalities were observed from the 1970’s within a group of several South-Eastern European countries.