“After decades of worsening diets and sharp increases in obesity, Americans’ eating habits have begun changing for the better,” says the New York Times. The newspaper’s column of analysis, The Upshot, says that since 2003 American adults are eating fewer calories per day, “their first sustained decline” in 40 years of federal record-keeping. Daily calories consumed by children have “fallen even more – by at least 9 percent.”
The most striking shift, says the Times, is the decline in consumption of full-calorie soda: Down 25 percent since the late 1990s. Sugary drinks have been a prominent target for reformers in the past few years. Voters in Berkeley, California, passed the nation’s first “soda” tax on sugar-sweetened beverages in 2014.
More than a third of Americans are considered obese, which increases the risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes and cancer. “But the changes in eating habits suggest that what once seemed an inexorable decline in health may finally be changing course,” said the Times.
In a sidebar, the Times explained how it reached the conclusion that American diets are improving. It looked at three different sources for data on food consumption. After making allowance for the imprecise measurements in them, the Times says “findings from all three have substantial overlap, giving researchers confidence that the changes are real.” For more, click here.