- A new study finds that Americans’ eating habits have changed little since 1999.
- Our diets are still high in processed foods, which can increase our risk of disease.
- Eliminating sugary drinks and limiting your intake of processed foods to two times a week may help.
Researchers who study food as medicine say Americans are eating healthier than they used to, but they still have a long way to go.
Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food and Medicine Institute at Tufts University in Boston, is co-author of a study on the diet quality of nearly 52,000 American adults from 1999 to 2020. The findings were published online Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Mozaffarian and co-author Junxiu Liu looked at data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and found that Americans’ eating habits have changed little over the past 20 years.
Between 1999 and 2020, 10.5% of study participants shifted from an “unhealthy” diet to a healthier diet higher in fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and lower in sodium, processed meat and saturated fat.
However, only 1% of study participants consumed an “ideal” diet (four to five cups of fruits and vegetables daily, plus beans, whole grains and nuts) over the same period.
“People often ask me, ‘Why are obesity and diabetes still on the rise when diets are slowly improving?’ They’re increasing because only 1.58 percent of Americans are eating an ideal diet. We still have a long way to go,” Mozaffarian told CNN.
“We are at a standstill as a nation and this does not bode well for our health. If I were to rate the American diet, I would give it a D, slightly above an F,” Mozaffarian said.
Why are Americans failing at dieting?
Typically, the American diet is made up of ultra-processed foods and foods high in salt and sugar, which can increase the risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke and premature death. According to Heidi Silver, R.D., director of the Vanderbilt Diet, Body Composition and Human Metabolism Core at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, factors such as food insecurity and poverty are contributing to the lack of overall improvement in people’s diets over the past 20 years.
“Food insecurity affects diet quality through reduced consumption of healthy foods, especially foods that are expensive, have a short shelf life and are in quantities that are not enough to fill a hungry child’s stomach,” Silver told Yahoo.
These systemic constraints can make it difficult for food-insecure people, including Black people, older people, and low-income people, to make lasting changes to their eating habits.
Small changes to your diet can help reduce your health risks
For people looking for an easy, inexpensive way to improve their diet, cutting out sugary drinks is a good first step, says Dr. Gregory Katz, a cardiologist at NYU Langone.
“Caloric intake and alcohol intake are the biggest modifiable risk factors. You’d be surprised how many people are eating 500 calories a day,” Katz told Business Insider’s Gaby Landsberg. “Just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy.”
Katz suggested cutting out soda, juice, sugary coffee drinks, and cocktails, and instead drinking unsweetened tea or water flavored with juice or citrus fruits.
Aiming to replace two meals of processed foods each week is one strategy that doesn’t require overhauling your entire diet, says W. Taylor Kimberly, PhD, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and lead author of a recent study linking ultra-processed foods to health risks like dementia and stroke.
For example, you can eat baked sweet potatoes instead of french fries, or nuts and carrots instead of cookies or crackers.
Kimberly said a good rule of thumb is to prepare meals at home whenever possible.
“If you see it and think you can make it in your own kitchen, that’s a good indicator,” he said.
