What are the most popular foods in America? Take a guess
December 13, 2007
According to a group that tracks this sort of thing, the leading generators of food sales are (more or less in order): soft drinks, refrigerated milk, ready-to-eat cereal, fresh bread, bottled water, cookies, chocolate candy, and potato chips. Soft drinks are #1. A sufficient explanation for America’s weight problem?
Holy yes!
Not one of these is an essential food, nor was available to us millions of years ago when evolutionary forces were creating the bodies we have today. For that matter, most of them weren’t even available to the average person two hundred years ago.
Comment by Anna — December 14, 2007 @ 1:04 am
Utterly unsurprising. And note that, except for the water, every one of these is a carbohydrate food.
The only one of those things that I would recommend consuming is bottled water, and then only in a real pinch. All the petroleum that goes into that plastic could be put to better use. (I don’t think a lot of people realize that food and beverage containers MUST be made of virgin plastic.)
Then again, I haven’t bought into the “8 glasses a day” myth, so I only drink when I’m thirsty. This means I don’t have to carry a liter of water with me wherever I go the way a lot of people feel compelled to do. If I’m going to be away from a faucet (yes, remember those?) for more than a couple of hours, I will fill a reusable bottle and bring it along. But I don’t think I’m going to shrivel up and die if I don’t have a bottle of Poland Spring strapped to my hip.
Comment by Migraineur — December 14, 2007 @ 1:02 pm
Milk is more popular than cookies, chocolate candy, and potato chips? Hard to believe.
Comment by Sheila — December 16, 2007 @ 10:28 pm
That’s really stunning, and yet not that surprising. How in the world did it come to this?
The other cay at the grocery store checkout I was noticing the contents of the cart of a family in line ahead of me….filled with cookies, crackers, ice cream, 12-packs of sugary soda, frozen french fries, Go-gurts, sweet cereals, wierd fruitish-looking sticky sugary concotions in brightly colored packages, obviously aimed at children. I’m not even sure what those are. All of this junk to feed a family, including 3 young children. Sometimes I just have to bite my tongue to not point out to the parents that after spending $100 or more they have no real nourishing food to take home to feed the kids with. The only thing even approaching food is the big jug of low-fat milk, and that is highly debatable.
In my opinion, this really does constitute child abuse, unintentional and born of ignorance, but nonetheless abuse.
Sad.
Comment by Jane — December 23, 2007 @ 3:57 pm