Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Are Americans eating right?

After decades of overeating, Americans are consuming fewer calories. But we're not necessarily getting those calories from the right kinds of food.

JULIA TOFAN used to be a regular soda drinker. But a couple of years ago, the Hebron, Connecticut, teen started paying more attention to the news about how unhealthy sugary drinks are. She began limiting herself to having soda only at social gatherings. Last year, she cut it out altogether. "I decided it wasn't healthy," she says. "So I stopped."
Julia, now 16, isn't alone. For the first time in 40 years, Americans are cutting back on calories. (The average adult should consume about 2,000 a day.) According to a 2014 study published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN), the reductions have taken place over the past decade. They have been most dramatic among young children and households with kids. The biggest cuts across the board have been in soda consumption. As Dr. David Satcher, a former U.S. Surgeon General, points out, "The attitude more and more in this country is that it's not a good idea to consume a lot of soda." The study also found that obesity rates have stopped rising for school-age children. This suggests that the calorie cuts are starting to make a difference.
"This was like a freight train going downhill without brakes," says Kelly Brownell, dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University in North Carolina. "Anything slowing it down is good."
Still, the study also reveals that many Americans have other important dietary changes to make--and last month, federal health officials reported that obesity rates rose slightly overall.
How We Got Fat
American waistlines started expanding in the 1980s for a variety of reasons. Marion Nestle, a food studies professor at New York University, says that one of the main factors was the rise of large-scale industrial farming, which was encouraged by new government policies intended to spur agricultural production.
With the help of fertilizers, pesticides, and high-tech machines, such farms could pump out crops like corn and soy in amounts never before seen. The additional supply drove food prices down, which had ripple effects on the American diet.
"People ate out more, there was an enormous growth in the number of fast-food places, portions got larger, and food [was everywhere]," says Nestle. "Suddenly, every single store, no matter what they were selling, had candy bars or some kind of food available."
At the same time, Nestle says, some people and groups began pushing for legislation to limit the number of junk-food ads aimed at children and teens. But the food industry pushed back hard. Congress bowed to corporate pressure and shot down the proposed limits.
By the mid-1990s--around the time McDonald's introduced its 42-ounce "supersize" soda and other fast-food chains followed suit--the United States was in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Public-health advocates began publicizing the costs of obesity.
In 2001, a landmark Surgeon General's report described the increasing evidence that obesity was a risk factor for such chronic diseases as diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers. (Obesity is defined as having a body mass index--or BMI--of 30 or above. BMI is calculated by dividing a person's weight in kilograms by the square of his or her height in meters. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered healthy.)
Today, 38 percent of adults and 17 percent of children are obese. The latter figure is a threefold increase from 1980. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity is responsible for about 400,000 deaths per year in the U.S. and racks up about $150 billion in medical costs annually.
Targeting Sugar and Fast Food
For years, public-health advocates have been focusing their message on what they see as the biggest culprit in the obesity epidemic: soda. Their anti-soda messages appear to be having a significant impact on soda consumption.
McDonald's phased out its supersize soda starting in 2004. In 2014, Americans purchased about 30 gallons of full-calorie soda on average, down from 40 gallons in 1998, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit consumer-advocacy group in Washington, D.C.
The Obama administration has also weighed in on the health crisis. Under the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), which was passed by Congress in 2010, chain restaurants will soon be required to publish the calorie content of their meals. The federal government has also mandated that schools offer healthier lunches. And First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move! campaign has focused on getting kids to exercise and make healthy food choices.
Several cities have gone further. Philadelphia subsidizes produce purchases for the poor. New York City has guidelines for the kinds of food available in day-care centers. Last year, Berkeley, California, became the first city in the U.S. to tax sugar-sweetened beverages.
But there's been resistance too. A 2012 New York City ban on the sale of sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces in certain places was later overturned. The state's highest court ruled that the city's Board of Health didn't have the authority to impose the ban.
Other efforts seem not to have worked. In 2008, South Los Angeles banned the opening of any new fast-food restaurants in an effort to curb obesity in the area. A study by the Rand Corporation, however, shows that obesity rates there have actually increased.
Changes Still Required
The AJCN study indicates that, even with soda consumption down, our diets still have a lot of room for improvement. Americans continue to eat too few fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and too many processed and fatty foods. Also, despite evidence that teens like Julia are cutting soda calories, they haven't cut back enough on overall calories. Nor have less-educated and lower-income Americans.

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