
What Americans ate on an average day, for the past several decades - hokkos
http://flowingdata.com/2016/05/17/the-changing-american-diet/
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vgoh1
Sugar and corn syrup seem like glaring omissions, given that a lot of recent
data suggests that sugar is much more of a leading cause of obesity than we
once thought. It would also have been nice to see some indication of the
processing involved - for example, wheat is there, but what part of the wheat
is consumed by humans

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kzrdude
Would be interesting to know how the composition of the wheat consumed changed
over time. (According to paleo foods people, wheat now contains more gluten
per gram, more carbohydrates and less fibers.)

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lostlogin
It's not the composition but the quantity but here is a graph of it. I was
trying to find a graph of bread consumption over time, because the decline
correlates quite well with the introduction of mass produced factory bread -
devoid of flavour imho. [http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/wheat/wheats-
role-in-th...](http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/wheat/wheats-role-in-the-
us-diet.aspx)

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maxxxxx
The visualization makes no sense. You can't go back or forward in time to
check out a trend a little closer. It looks good on the surface but in my view
it's totally useless to get real information.

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CptMauli
if you click on "pause", then you can actually move the time.

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CaptSpify
But then it doesn't re-order? That seems to limit the experience.

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jasonjei
What would have been easier to read are snapshots at significant intervals
rather than the animation

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projectramo
The big surprise for me is how little things have changed when viewed in this
manner.

The majority of the diet is taken up by the things in the top row, and those
haven't changed as dramatically as I had assumed.

In my mind there was this exponential explosion in sugar since the 70s, but
the big change seems to be the drop in consumption of whole milk.

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brianwawok
The infusion of food as science is not represented in the chart. For example
people eating boiled corn 30 years ago vs Doritos 10 years ago.. both would
show up as "corn".

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nacs
Yes I was surprised at the "Potatoes" amount being so high and was thinking
people couldn't possibly be consuming that much mashed potatoes at home then
realized this probably included French-fries that are included with every meal
from the majority of fast-food vendors.

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chrisseaton
I wonder why Americans eat so little lamb compared to beef, chicken and pork?
I once had shepherd’s pie in the US and it was made with beef!!

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AdmiralAsshat
Few (non-immigrant) families eat it, therefore few people know how to cook it
properly. And so when they decide to try lamb on a whim, it comes out tasting
bland, they say, "Ugh! Lamb is awful!", and never try it again.

It took me over a year to help my girlfriend un-learn that initial reaction by
repeatedly taking her to Mediterranean and Indian restaurants where they
actually know _how_ to cook lamb.

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jff
I think a lamb roast, lightly seasoned before roasting, is one of the finest
meals you can get. The flavor of the meat is exceptional, and you really owe
it to yourself to try it if you can.

Costco sells lamb roasts for a reasonable price. This looks like a pretty
decent recipe, although I never make sauce for my lamb--it's certainly juicy
enough as-is: [http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-
lagasse/rosemary-a...](http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-
lagasse/rosemary-and-garlic-roast-leg-of-lamb-recipe.html)

Another great use for the Costco lamb: cube it, marinade it in French dressing
for a few hours, then make kebabs alternating the lamb cubes, chunks of bacon,
and pineapple pieces. Cook it on the grill, it's fantastic.

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anexprogrammer
Or a quick, light curry. Add onions, chilli, garlic, mint sauce (simply
chopped mint in malt vinegar + sugar), peppers.

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dudul
The problem with this type of study is that it averages all Americans
together. I haven't looked in details at the graphs, but let's assume they
show that nothing has really changed in 30 years. What does it mean? Maybe all
Americans have kept their diet the same, but maybe some people started making
a lot of effort to eat better (the ones with the awareness, the will and the
means to do so), while others started eating very un-healthy food.

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brianwawok
It is still a useful metric.

If we show Diabetes rate has doubled in the past 30 years, and the consumption
of something (Cheese?) has tripled in the past 30 years, it may be worth doing
a study on the effects of cheese on health. Note I didn't say immediately
blame cheese for obesity like the news would...

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maxerickson
Consumption has increased across categories.

[http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter2.pdf](http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter2.pdf)

Oils, grains and sugars are the big ones.

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fencepost
edit: Ignore this, I'm an idiot and got hypnotized by the pretty graphs
without actually reading the FA.

The thing that really jumped out at me was the more than tripled cooking oil
consumption over that time, without a corresponding decrease in usage of other
oils (cooking oil went from 13g to 44.7g; margarine went from 6.5g to 1.6g).
That's an enormous change, and it ramped up fast starting in 2000 (13g to 23g
71-88; flattish 21g to 24g 89-99; 28g to 45g 2000-2008; flattish until 2013
with a dip in 2009).

Putting it in calorie count numbers, that's a change of +230ish calories in
oils over that time period ignoring the less-used ones. In terms of decreases
there are really only a couple that seem notable - beef dropping from 2.6
oz/day to 1.8 oz/day and whole milk dropping from 0.7c to 0.16c - neither of
which is going to have a significant impact on calories consumed.

I wonder what changed at the inflection points on the cooking oil (and
shortening, which had a bump during 2000-2007) scales - they somewhat
correspond with presidencies, but not directly (e.g. Clinton was still in
office in 2000 during the first year of the rapid rise period).

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trelltron
It explains the cooking oil rise in the article as:

"a change in reporting to the Census Bureau"

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clock_tower
I wonder what a "monkey with the charts" diet of lamb, carrots, avocados, rye
bread, lard, and ice cream would be like. For the diet to be palatable at all,
you'd have to go very easy on the lard, but the rest of it actually sounds
pretty appetizing.

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Shivetya
with regards to dark greens coming up the charts. better farming techniques
and especially packaging and timely shipping increased the availability. throw
in some heavy marketing from the prepackaged crowd and its easy to see why the
increase is there.

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nervoustwit
Lard puts on a pretty lackluster performance. Very disappointed.

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protomyth
Come to the reservations and let me introduce you to Indian Tacos
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frybread](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frybread)

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vezycash
They used different units of measurement for each category. It makes direct
comparison unnecessarily difficult, maybe misleading.

Meat->Ounces; Vegetable->cups; Fruits->cups; Grains->ounces; Dairy->cups; and
finally, Fat->Grams

Let's look at 2008.

Meat->Chicken->2.10 ounces; Vegetable->Potatoes->0.59cups;
Fruits->Apple->0.11cups->Grains->Wheat Flour->4.07ounces; Fat->Cooking
Oil->45.10grams;

In other words, they ate more cooking oil than every other category combined!
To me, it seems like this was cooked up to support the "Fat is BAD" fad.

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dghughes
The great beef to chicken switch of 2004/2005.

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arprocter
I guess all those Chick fil A ads worked

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sleepychu
Gotta love any article with relevant nerd notes!

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smrtinsert
I wish there was only one chart per category.

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reddotX
meat + potatoes

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xufi
That's a nice diet to have. Add some junk food in too Ice cream/chips and
fries. You got yourself a overweight population

