Americans Are Eating Too Much of the Wrong Foods

Americans still eat too much junk food, which tends to be loaded with salt or added sugar. We eat too few fruits and vegetables, too. Here's what you can do.

You may have noticed that nutritional label percentages on the back of packaged foods are based on a diet of 2,000 calories a day. That’s roughly what an adult woman should eat; men can consume about 500 calories more.  

If your calorie consumption has crept up, you may not have noticed; it’s common for people to underestimate how much they’re eating.

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Back in 2010, data from large surveys suggested that American adults ate just over 2,000 calories a day, and the total was declining. Children were eating less, too.

But we still have a long way to go to improve our diet. The amount of total calories Americans eat hasn’t changed much since then, and junk food isn’t just a problem for children. Adults eat almost five junk food items a day, on average, around 47 percent of their total energy intake.

This helps explain why obesity rates rose during the past decade, to 42 percent for adults. Nearly 20 percent of children are obese as well.

Here are some ways to improve your diet and reduce the number of calories you eat.

Cut your sugar consumption

Sugar in processed foods has been a big part of the problem. Three quarters of our daily sugar intake comes from junk food. A can of sweetened soda contains about 8 teaspoons of sugar.

The American Heart Association recommends that teenagers stick to a daily 5 to 8 teaspoons of sugar. So, one soda alone would put a kid over the top on any given day.  

The trend has been for fewer children to load up on those sodas — which have been a target of public health campaigns. In general, Americans, are getting fewer calories from beverages. We switched over to artificially sweetened “diet” sodas for a time, but that trend may have fallen off as well, suggesting that Americans have also heard the news that artificial sweeteners may be bad for their health and may even cause weight gain.

Change your diet

Now the bad news: We still need to change our diets.

Americans need to eat far less salt (we take in more than 3,400 mg each day on average and need to cut that by at least 1,100). We also need to eat more fruits and vegetables — at least 1.5 to 2 cups of fruit and 2 to 3 cups of vegetables a day for adults. Only about 12 percent of adults get enough fruit, and 10 percent enough vegetables.

Eating dinner as a family at the table and cooking meals with significant vegetables can help. Serve fruit for dessert.  When you do eat out, explain to your children that portion sizes in restaurants are much bigger than they used to be. Share entrees or order an appetizer for dinner, send away bread baskets, and split or skip the dessert.

Eating more healthily is essential but not the whole job. Americans at all ages need more sleep and exercise. Kids are less likely to bike or walk to school and spend far too many hours wrapped up in TV, computers, video games, cell phones, and movies — often exposed to ads for fat- and sugar-laden foods.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has advised parents to establish "screen-free" zones in children's bedrooms, turn off the TV during dinner, and limit children and teens to one or two hours a day of TV or video games.

Encourage kids to play outdoors or join sports teams. Children and teens need at least an hour of physical activity a day, most of it aerobic. We all need to do muscle and bone strengthening exercises, like skipping rope, gymnastics, and push-ups at least three days a week.

It’ll be easier to maintain and teach your family better habits if you’re part of a national shift. We tend to echo people around us in all of our activities related to health. So set a good example and seek support if you need to increase your exercise or lose weight.

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