summarize text each 150 words

GLOSSARY

Adapted from

Desilver, D. (2016, December 13). How America’s diet has changed over time. Retrieved July 22, 2019, from Pew Research Center website: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/13/whats-on-your-table-how-americas-diet-has-changed-over-the-decades/

grain (n); a food group including wheat, barley, oatmeal and rice. Grains are used to make food products such as bread, pasta and biscuits.

consume (v); use, eat or drink e.g. We now consume much more sugar than our grandparents did.

dramatically (adv) / dramatic (adj); describing a large difference e.g. Dubai has changed dramatically in the past 30 years. It’s completely different now.

decade (n); 10 years

equivalent (adj); equal to / the same as

fructose (n); a type of sugar which is made from plants (sugar cane, sugar beet, corn).

wheat (n); a type of grain which is used to make both bread and pasta

prior (adj); before e.g. Prior to 2010, most people watched television as a family. After that point, however, personal devices such as tablets became much more popular.

peak (v, n); (to reach) the highest point e.g. Generally, the temperature peaks between 2:00pm and 3:00pm. After that point, it goes down again.

Americans eat more chicken and less beef than they used to. They drink less milk – especially whole milk – and eat less ice cream, but they consume much more cheese. Their diets include less sugar than in prior decades but contain considerably more corn-derived sweeteners. And while the average American eats the equivalent of 1.2 gallons of yogurt a year, he or she also consumes 36 pounds of cooking oils – more than three times as much as in the early 1970s.

Americans’ eating habits, in short, are confusing and do not form a clear pattern, at least according to our analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data. The USDA’s results seem in line with the Pew Research Center’s recent survey on food and nutrition attitudes. In this survey, 54% of Americans said people in the U.S. pay more attention to eating healthy foods today compared with 20 years ago. The same percentage who said Americans’ actual eating habits are less healthy today than they were 20 years ago. While 73% of Americans said they were very or fairly focused on healthy and nutritious eating, 58% said that most days they probably should be eating healthier.

To find out how Americans really eat and how that has changed over time, we analyzed data from the USDA’s Food Availability (Per Capita) Data System, or FADS, to find out. While the nation’s eating habits do not change all that much from year to year, looking at them over 40 or more years shows some significant changes.

Americans eat much more than we used to: The average American consumed 2,481 calories a day in 2010, about 23% more than in 1970. That’s more than most adults need to maintain their current weight, according to the Mayo Clinic’s calorie calculator. A 40-year-old man of average height and weight who’s moderately active, for instance, needs 2,400 calories; a 40-year-old woman with the same characteristics needs 1,850 calories.

Nearly half of those calories come from just two food groups: flours and grains (581 calories, or 23.4%) and fats and oils (575, or 23.2%), up from a combined 37.3% in 1970. Meats, dairy and sweeteners provide smaller shares of our daily caloric intake than they did four decades ago. However, consumption of fruits and vegetables has also dropped in percentage terms (7.9% in 2010 versus 9.2% in 1970).

Most of the fats consumed in the US are in the form of vegetable oils: soybean, corn, canola and other oils used as ingredients or in which foods are cooked. Such oils contributed 402 calories to daily diets in 2010. While butter consumption, at 3.3 pounds (1.5kgs) per person per year, is about the same as it was in 1970, margarine use has fallen dramatically, from a peak of 7.2 pounds (3.25 kg) per person per year in 1976 to 2.1 pounds (slightly less than a kilo) in 2010.

Several interesting shifts are happening within food groups. For the past decade, for instance, chicken has topped beef as the most-consumed meat. In 2014, Americans ate an average of 47.9 pounds (21 and a half kilos approximately) of chicken a year, compared to 39.4 pounds (1.7 ounces a day) of beef. While average chicken consumption has more than doubled since 1970, beef has fallen by more than a third.

Regarding dairy products, Americans are drinking 42% less milk than they did in 1970: 12.6 gallons (47.6 litres) a year. However, we’re eating a lot more cheese: 21.9 pounds (10 kg) a year, nearly three times the average annual consumption in 1970. Yogurt has increased dramatically in popularity, from levels close to zero in 1970 to almost 1.2 gallons (4.5 litres) per person per year in 2014 – a 1,700% increase.

Americans consume 29% more grains, mostly in the form of breads, pastries and other baked goods, than they did in 1970 – the equivalent of 122.1 pounds (over 55 kg) a year. However, this figure is actually down from 2000, the year of “peak grain,” when per capita annual consumption was 137.6 pounds (almost 62.5 kg). While corn products are a slightly bigger part of the average American diet (14 pounds/6.3 kg per person per year, up from 4.9 pounds/2.2 kg in 1970), wheat is still the country’s most popular grain.

America’s sweet tooth peaked in 1999, when each person consumed an average of 90.2 pounds (almost 41 kg) of added caloric sweeteners a year, or 26.7 teaspoons a day. In 2014, sweetener use was down to 77.3 pounds (35 kg) per year, or 22.9 teaspoons a day. (Note that those figures don’t include noncaloric sweeteners, such as aspartame, sucralose and stevia.) While most of the sweetener consumed in 1970 was refined sugar, the market is now almost evenly split between sugar and corn-derived sweeteners, such as high-fructose corn syrup.