NUTRITION Study finds Americans consume shocking amounts of junk food

About 30 percent of the foods adults eat is nutritionally deficient.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Junk food, sugary drinks and beer make up nearly one-third of the calories adult Americans consume daily, according to new study.
"We knew it was bad, but we didn't know it was this bad," said Gladys Block, a professor of epidemiology and public health nutrition at the University of California at Berkeley. "It's no wonder there's an obesity epidemic in this country."
Her findings, the most recent and comprehensive look at what the nation eats based on caloric intake, show that three types of foods -- sweets and desserts; soft drinks; and alcoholic beverages -- make up almost 25 percent of all calories.
Salty snacks and fruit-flavored drinks make up an additional 5 percent, bringing the energy contributed by nutritionally deficient foods to about 30 percent of the calories adults eat every day, the study shows.
Healthier foods
By comparison, healthier foods such as fruits and vegetables make up only 10 percent of the caloric intake in the U.S. diet. Depending on body size and exercise level, women should consume an average of about 2,000 calories a day and men 2,500 calories.
Soft drinks and pastries led the top 10 foods contributing the most calories to the American diet. Sodas alone contributed 7.1 percent of the total calories in the U.S. population. Foods such as hamburgers, pizza and potato chips rounded out the top five food items. Beer came in ninth on the list, just ahead of French fries and fried potatoes.
The study, published in the June issue of the Journal of Food Chemistry and Analysis, comes as the U.S. Department of Agriculture is reworking the food guide pyramid. This fall, the federal government will issue a new set of dietary guidelines intended to limit fat, salt, alcohol and soda consumption and urging Americans to eat a healthier mix of foods based on fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk products and lean meats, fish or meat alternatives.
Far removed
Most Americans' diets are far from those recommendations, said Block, who based her study on the eating habits of 4,760 adults who took part in one of the nation's largest health studies, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Participants were asked to report all the foods they ate in a 24-hour period. The study, based on diets from 1999 to 2000, doesn't include people younger than 18, who have even worse diets than adults, according to Block and other nutritionists.
"If I was to look separately at teenagers and young adults, it would be much worse," she said. "I really shudder to think what our national health situation is going to be 20 or 30 years from now when the young generation who is really living on this diet gets older."
The study highlights another disturbing undercurrent to the nation's obesity crisis: Although two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese, many of them are malnourished, Block said.