Fast Food Makes Up 11 Percent of Calories in U.S. Diet: CDC
Fast Food Makes Up 11 Percent of Calories in U.S. Diet: CDC
Slideshow: The 7 Missing Nutrients in Your Diet THURSDAY, Feb. 21 (HealthDay News) -- Fast food fare from restaurants such as McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Pizza Hut accounted for more than 11 percent of the calories in American adults' daily diets in recent years, federal health officials reported Thursday.
Yet that's lower than it was from 2003 to 2006, when fast food contributed an average of nearly 13 percent of daily calories to the American diet, said report author Cheryl Fryar, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Whether this is an ongoing trend isn't clear, Fryar added. Several factors were examined, to see how they related to how many daily calories U.S. adults got from fast food between 2007 and 2010.
"We could see a difference by age group," Fryar noted. "As you get older, the percentage of calories from fast food declines."
One expert sees this as a positive trend.
"The good news from this study is that as we get older, perhaps we do get wiser and eat less fast food," said Samantha Heller, a clinical nutritionist at the NYU Center for Musculoskeletal Care in New York City.
"However, a take-home message is that the study suggests that the more fast food you eat, the fatter you get," Heller said.
"This is worrisome," she added, "because obesity in one's 20s can increase the risk for metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease early in life."
Metabolic syndrome is a group of risk factors -- including high blood pressure, high blood sugar, unhealthy cholesterol levels and abdominal fat -- that increase a person's risk for heart disease and diabetes.
In the national survey, people were asked to recall the source of all the food they'd eaten in the past 24 hours. The response "restaurant fast food/pizza" was coded as "fast food."
Racial/ethnic differences also surfaced in the results.
"Although there was no difference between non-Hispanic white and Hispanic adults, we did find the percent of calories from fast food was higher among non-Hispanic black adults," Fryar noted.
Also, the more a person weighed, the more fast food they consumed as a percentage of their diet, Fryar said.
Fast Food Makes Up 11% of Calories in U.S. Diet
Yet that's lower than it was from 2003 to 2006, when fast food contributed an average of nearly 13 percent of daily calories to the American diet, said report author Cheryl Fryar, of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Whether this is an ongoing trend isn't clear, Fryar added. Several factors were examined, to see how they related to how many daily calories U.S. adults got from fast food between 2007 and 2010.
"We could see a difference by age group," Fryar noted. "As you get older, the percentage of calories from fast food declines."
One expert sees this as a positive trend.
"The good news from this study is that as we get older, perhaps we do get wiser and eat less fast food," said Samantha Heller, a clinical nutritionist at the NYU Center for Musculoskeletal Care in New York City.
"However, a take-home message is that the study suggests that the more fast food you eat, the fatter you get," Heller said.
"This is worrisome," she added, "because obesity in one's 20s can increase the risk for metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease early in life."
Metabolic syndrome is a group of risk factors -- including high blood pressure, high blood sugar, unhealthy cholesterol levels and abdominal fat -- that increase a person's risk for heart disease and diabetes.
In the national survey, people were asked to recall the source of all the food they'd eaten in the past 24 hours. The response "restaurant fast food/pizza" was coded as "fast food."
Racial/ethnic differences also surfaced in the results.
"Although there was no difference between non-Hispanic white and Hispanic adults, we did find the percent of calories from fast food was higher among non-Hispanic black adults," Fryar noted.
Also, the more a person weighed, the more fast food they consumed as a percentage of their diet, Fryar said.
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