GR GastroRank. Vol. VI · Spring '26
The data · Dispatch 01

A world measured in mouthfuls.

What the numbers say about how the world cooks. Region leaderboards, category breakdowns, calorie distributions, and the processing levels that show through every national cuisine.

Which regions cook healthiest?

Average health score across dishes in each region.

Least processed regions

Average NOVA score across dishes in each region — higher means more whole-food, less industrial.

Most anti-inflammatory regions

Average anti-inflammatory index — omega-3s, polyphenols, turmeric, olive oil, leafy greens.

What kinds of dishes define world cuisine?

Our 2,024-dish corpus, grouped by preparation and form.

The calorie spectrum

Distribution of calories per serving across all dishes. Bucketed.

Health score distribution

How the full corpus spreads across the final Rank score. Most traditional dishes cluster in the middle; the top band is deliberately narrow.

Three things the data says

Observation 01

Mediterranean and Levantine dishes lead every health leaderboard. The olive-oil-and-legume axis is real.

Observation 02

NOVA processing is the single biggest differentiator. Dishes with one industrial ingredient (a seed oil, a cured meat, a ketchup) fall 10–20 points below their whole-food twins.

Observation 03

Legume-forward cuisines dominate the top of the chart. Ethiopian, Levantine, North-African, and South-Asian dals and stews eat the top 30 positions because they stack high NOVA, high fiber, high anti-inflammatory chemistry, and low glycemic load simultaneously.