Eating a healthy diet may be good for you, but it may be unintentionally slimming for the economies of some developing countries, a new study says. British researchers modelled what could happen if people in Britain and Brazil adopted healthier diets as defined by the World Health Organisation, including more fruit and vegetables and less meat and dairy products.

In Britain, experts estimated that fixing the country's bad eating habits might prevent nearly 70,000 people from prematurely dying of heart disease and cancer. It would also theoretically save the health system £20 billion (Dh117.44 billion) every year.

In Brazil, however, the rates of illnesses linked to a poor diet are not as high as in the UK. So Brazilians would get relatively few health benefits while their economy might lose millions.

The study said decisions in Brazil and in western countries to adopt more vegetarian diets could cost the meat-dependent Brazilian economy 1,388 million reais (Dh2.99 trillion). "In an ideal world, we would all have a perfect diet," Richard Smith, the study's author and a professor of health system economics, said. "But it's also desirable that everybody has a job."