The New York Times
By BILL MARSH
In 1970, the average American ate about 16.4 pounds of food a week, or
2.3 pounds daily. By 2006, the average intake grew by an additional
1.8 pounds a week.
Among other things, that’s an extra half pound of fat weekly – mostly
from oils and shortening. That doesn’t count the fat in the extra
quarter pound of meat Americans now eat every seven days. Those fats
were somewhat offset by a steep drop in dairy consumption, the only
major food group to have a decline, primarily in milk drinking. (But
we do love our cheese. More and more of it.)
This portrait of the raw ingredients of the American diet is based on
what the Agriculture Department calls “food availability” – the amount
of food produced for the average American consumer. The data are
adjusted for food losses (waste on farms; in processing and transportation;
and in stores, restaurants and homes) to provide a close approximation of
what individuals eat. (The most recent year for which data are available
is 2006.)
The numbers don’t reveal how much grain went into bread versus
cookies, or how many chicken breasts became chicken nuggets. But the
overall increase in eating does suggest a link with the rise in
Americans’ weight over the same period. According to the Centers for
Disease Control, 15 percent of adults age 20 to 74 were obese by 1980.
By 2007, that had more than doubled.
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For a most informative graphic explaining this dietary shift, click on this link: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/08/03/business/03metrics.graphix.read
y.html
