Calories in the USA: An Interactive Overview

In the US, the average daily dietary intake has increased by 600 calories — from 2,172 to 2,775 — over the last thirty-seven years. That may not surprise you, but the details just might.

In this chart, we see that Americans are actually eating roughly the same number of calories in five of seven food groups — fruit, vegetables, dairy, sugar and protein. However...

We'll focus on those two food groups in subsequent charts to see exactly what's going on.

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How does the United States rank worldwide, in terms of daily caloric intake?

Switzerland ranked #1, with much of Eastern and Western Europe close behind.

Our Canadian neighbors to the North haven't fared much better, rising from the 33rd most caloric country to #2.

Note that this graph does not account for spoilage and waste, which explains the discrepancy between this chart and some of the others.

The average daily dietary intake in the United States increased by 600 calories between 1970 and 2007.

Over the last thirty-seven years, the American diet has seen a dramatic increase in the number of calories from cooking oils and related salad oils.

One explanation is the proliferation of fast-food restaurants — though Americans eat about the same number of calories in nearly every other food group, today's meals are much more likely to be fried in highly-caloric oil than the same meals in 1970.

Update: Astute reader Terry points out that the USDA changed the way they account for fat calories beginning in 2000. This accounts for about 100 calories of the increase, or approximately one-third.

As the USDA developed and publicized a food pyramid that looked like this, Americans began increasing their consumption of grains in the form of breads, cereals and pastas.

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the average American has not increased consumption of calories from dairy products in the last thirty-seven years.

While Americans are drinking fewer calories of milk, they are making up for it by consuming more calories from cheese products.

Though Americans are eating slightly more calories from sugar than in 1970, the rise is not that dramatic. Calories from added sugars peaked in 1999 at 510 per day, up from 402 in 1970. That number receded to 459 in 2007.

The big shift, however, comes in the form of sugar ingested.

HFCS, virtually non-existent in 1970, is less-expensive than cane or beet sugar to produce, due to government tariffs on sugar and incentives on corn production.

Americans get only 5 percent of their calories from vegetables, not surprising when you consider that most vegetables are so low in calories.

The breakdown into individual foods, however, is intriguing...

Americans have followed the USDA's advice in eating fewer calories of red meat. Calories consumed from Beef have dropped over 20% since 1970.

However, overall calorie consumption from protein sources has not changed significantly.

One of the reasons Americans are eating more calories today than in 1970 is that price of food, when adjusted for inflation, has dropped.

What is disturbing, though, is that the price of added sugars has dropped significantly more than the price of healthful foods has. This can be attributed to the proliferation of low-cost High-Fructose Corn Syrup over the last thirty years.

The purchase price of each food group has changed as follows:

• Fruit sources: 30% increase
• Vegetable sources: Unchanged
• Grain sources: 29% decrease
• Dairy sources: 38% decrease
• Fat sources: 38% decrease
• Protein sources: 50% decrease
• Sugar sources: 50% decrease

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