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With people living longer, more people living with long-term conditions, and lifestyle choices affecting people’s health, significant changes are needed to keep our NHS sustainable, address inequalities, and provide the best possible care for everyone.

Unhealthy diets are responsible for 11m preventable deaths globally per year, more even than smoking tobacco, according to a major study.

But the biggest problem is not the junk we eat but the nutritious food we don’t eat, say researchers, calling for a global shift in policy to promote vegetables, fruit, nuts and legumes.

While sugar and trans-fats are harmful, more deaths are caused by the absence of healthy foods in our diet, the study found.

The research is part of the Global Burden of Disease study by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle, published in the Lancet medical journal.

Heart attacks and strokes are the main diet-related causes of death, followed by cancers and type 2 diabetes, say researchers.

The study found that eating and drinking better could prevent one in five deaths around the world. Although diets vary from one country to another, eating too few fruits and vegetables and too much sodium (salt) accounted for half of all deaths and two-thirds of the years of disability attributable to diet.

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The British economy is at risk of sliding into a deepening downturn after stalling in the first quarter, following the weakest performance in the private sector in almost seven years as Brexit approaches.

In the latest sign the gridlock over leaving the EU is extracting a high price from the economy, the survey from IHS Markit and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply showed that overall business activity stalled in March.

The country’s dominant services sector, which contributes about four-fifths of GDP, slipped into contraction as consumers and clients put spending decisions on hold in response to the intense political uncertainty.

The survey of firms in the sector, which includes finance, shops and restaurants, will raise alarm bells at the Bank of England and the Treasury, which keep a close eye on the PMI indicators for early warning signs from the economy.

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Children who lived in areas with higher air pollution when younger are significantly more likely to have developed major depression by the age of 18, according to research.

Transport bosses have been urged to reduce pollution on the London Underground network after it was found to be 30 times higher than on busy roads in the capital.

Hospitals will be hit by “mayhem” this weekend because of the coming cold snap, a growing number of people with flu and the NHS’s staffing problems, a leading doctor has warned.

An MP has urged the work and pensions secretary, Amber Rudd, to make the benefits system more humane over Christmas by reinstating a long-standing £10 extra payout and returning to a previous pause on sanctioning claimants over the festive period.

The SNP’s Hannah Bardell said Rudd, who pledged last week to make sure the social security system helped people when they most needed it, should act on her words and do the “decent and right thing”.

She also demanded a reinstatement of a traditional pause over the festive period of sanctioning claimants, in which their payments are docked or stopped as punishment for alleged failures to comply with jobcentre rules.

Labour has pledged £100m a year in additional help for rough sleepers in cold weather, which the party says is key to reducing the unacceptably high number of homeless people who die each year.

There is already a severe weather emergency protocol, under which local authorities are meant to provide extra assistance for homeless people during cold snaps and other weather events such as heatwaves and floods.

Labour’s plan would put initial one-year funding of £100m into a new rough sleepers cold weather fund, which would also find staff to connect them with support workers, with the longer-term aim of helping them stay off the streets permanently.

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