The changing American diet: a report card

American diet changed drastically during the 20th century. Over the decades, we cut back on grains, fresh fruit, and milk and became enamored with nearly everything sold at fast food restaurants: beef, chicken, cheese, soft drinks, frozen potatoes, even pickles and ketchup.

But our diets are still in flux. So every few years, we use data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to check up on the latest shifts in what Americans are eating.

The USDA's data tracks the quantities of food that are available for us to eat. It over-estimates what we actually swallow, since some food never gets sold, some spoils, and some gets left on our plates or slipped to Fido under the table. Nevertheless, the numbers are valid for year-to-year comparisons.

The "grades" look at not just what we're eating, but whether or not we're moving in the right direction. Here's the country's latest report card.

Source: US Department of Agriculture.

Meat, Poultry, & Seafood: B+

Chicken passed pork in the mid-1990s and never looked back. It's now poised to over-take beef as the most popular American meat. While that's good news, we still eat way too many burgers. And the red meats (beef and pork) combined still outpace chicken, turkey, and fish, which are lower in saturated fat.

What's more, much of our chicken is fried in partially hydrogenated oil, so it packs a hefty dose of trans fat.

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Dairy: C--

These days, cheese shows up on steaks, pizza, burgers, salads, chicken, fries, and more. We're at an all-time high of close to 32 pounds per person per year. Until the cheese line turns south, we're heading towards Arteries au Gratin.

At least full-fat ice cream has dropped a few notches since the 1980s. Maybe the low-carb craze (and good sense) made people think twice before tucking into a double scoop of Chubby Hubby.

And yogurt continues to march higher. That's good news, since the yogurt market--unlike cheese and ice cream--is mostly low-fat.

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Flour & Cereal: B+

It's gotta be Atkins. What else but low-carb diets could have caused the slump in our flour appetite since the late 1990s? Less flour means less (or smaller) breads, cereals, pizza crusts, pancakes, pies, pretzels, cakes, cookies, croissants, crackers, muffins, doughnuts, etc. (Unfortunately, it has yet to mean smaller Americans.)

Unlike pasta and oats, rice and corn are still climbing, but they make up just a fraction of our total grains.

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Fats & Oils: C+

According to the USDA, what looks like a steep rise in 2000 may not reflect a jump in consumption of total fats. Several companies that hadn't been reporting to the government suddenly started to.

And most of the rise comes from oils and margarine, which won't damage your arteries like shortening, butter, beef tallow, and lard do.

But even before 2000, we were clearly eating too much fat. Don't believe us? Check your belly.

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Beverages: C

Soft drinks still dwarf all other beverages, but at least soda seems to have peaked in the late 1990s. Milk and coffee are down by about 10 gallons per person per year since 1970, while beer and fruit juice are holding steady.

The big news is bottled water, which has reached coffee-milk-beer range in less than 30 years. Hopefully, it's replacing soft drinks, not tap water.

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Milk: C

Whole milk is on a 35-year slide, and reduced fat (2%) milk has lost ground since 1990. Unfortunately, low-fat and fat-free milk haven't taken up the slack.

Total milk consumption continues to fall. And that's despite the milk industry's "Milk Your Diet. Lose Weight!" campaign. If dubious claims about milk's ability to make you lose weight aren't enough to spur sales, maybe nothing will.

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Fruits & Vegetables: A

If there's one grade we can be proud of, it's the solid A we've earned for eating more fruits and vegetables. The average American munched through some 420 pounds of fruit and 320 pounds of vegetables (excluding potatoes) in 2004. That's roughly 135 pounds more than we ate in 1970. What's more, potatoes--mostly sold as fries and chips--aren't rising.

Salad, anyone?

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Sweeteners: D

It's good to see that total caloric sweeteners (sugar, corn syrup, etc.) are finally headed lower, following their mostly uninterrupted 30-year run. It's probably no coincidence that the sugar curve follows soft drinks (and flour, which ends up in cookies, cakes, etc.).

Yet we're still eating a full 140 pounds of sugar per person per year--20 pounds more than we did in 1970. We need all those empty-calorie sweets like a sugar bowl in the head.

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Center for Science in the Public Interest
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning