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In 1970 the average American ate 16.4 pounds of food per week. By 2006 this had increased an additional 1.8 pounds per week.

What changed?

This nifty info-graphic by the New York Times shows some interesting trends.

• We drink 74% less whole milk but eat 180% more cheese
• Consumption of corn sweeteners is up by 373%
• We eat 14% less butter and 48% more added fats

The data made to create the graph is available from the US Department of Agriculture as Excel spreadsheets. I created the graph below a spreadsheet that contained our average daily per capital calories by year from 1970-2006.

It’s interesting to note that consumption of Fruit, Vegetables, and Dairy has been reasonably consistent, but check out that spike in added fats from 1999 to 2001. Our average daily calories from added fats went up from 497 to 616 in just one year! Any food detectives out there have any idea why?

The Overflowing American Dinner Plate[via DietBlog]
USDA Loss-Adjusted Food Availability Dataset

Related posts:

1. How Mediterranean is your diet?
2. 30 Days Raw
3. Three Days in Paris: Embracing the French Paradox
4. 101 thoughts on losing 100 pounds
5. Whole Grains and the Protein that Hates Them

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This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 7:13 am by monica and is filed under Diet, Link, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.