By John Salak –
Despite the unrelenting flood of research and warnings over the risks associated with unhealthy foods, the average American diet has only improved modestly over the past two decades.
The percentage of U.S. adults with a poor diet specifically decreased from 49 percent to 37 percent between 1999 and 2020, based on data from a regular federal survey of American dietary patterns.
Americans with intermediate diet quality also improved somewhat, up from 51 percent to 61 percent during the same period. But the proportion of Americans with an ideal diet remained starkly low, rising only from 0.7% to 1.6% during this time, researchers at Tufts University reported.
These slight improvements came despite widely reported research tying unhealthy food to obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. More than one million Americans, in fact, die every year from diet-related diseases, the researchers added.
“While we’ve seen some modest improvement in American diets in the last two decades, those improvements are not reaching everyone, and many Americans are eating worse,” noted researcher Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and director of the university’s Food is Medicine Institute.
“Our new research shows that the nation can’t achieve nutritional and health equity until we address the barriers many Americans face when it comes to accessing and eating nourishing food,” Mozaffarian added. “We face a national nutrition crisis, with continuing climbing rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes.”
In a serving of hopeful news, a research team out of Australia may have discovered how to nudge individuals to make better food choices: connecting to a social group.
Flinders University researchers report that having a sense of belonging to a social group can have a significant impact on a person’s diet, potentially encouraging them to make better choices and reducing their risks of related illnesses.
“Social groups, such as one’s nationality or university, provide group members with a shared social identity, or a sense of belonging, and can influence their behavior,” explained Professor Eva Kemps. “Accordingly, when someone sees themselves as belonging to a group and feels that their membership to the group is an important part of their identity, they are more likely to bring their behavior in line with what is perceived as the norm for that group.”
The influence of these groups can be potentially significant.
“This has shown to be true in influencing what we eat and the food choices we make and could have implications for the development of health campaigns and interventions that aim to promote healthier food choices,” Kemp explained.
The limited improvements in diet and the potential impact of social groups on eating habits come at a critical time as both researchers at Flinders and Tufts note. Obesity is a worldwide crisis. In the United States alone, almost 75 percent of adults are overweight, including almost 42 percent who are clinically obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
