It’s Dietary Evolution, Not Revolution

What’s going on here?

“Young people turn to vegetarianism,” front-page headlines proclaim one week, and the next week an article reports the rebirth of steakhouses.

Psychologists predict family dining will survive, while surveys report people are eating more meals out.

Statistics show that low-fat and fat-free products now constitute more than half of the new items on supermarket shelves, but chefs say high-fat desserts have never been more popular. Meanwhile, the number of obese adults reaches 34 percent, an all-time high.

Upscale grocery stores thrive by marketing organic produce, esoteric grains, imported cheeses and take-home gourmet meals. But processed foods like jars of spaghetti sauce and dinners in a box line the aisles of supermarkets.

Are we experiencing a food revolution? Is eating as we’ve traditionally known it destined for the sociological archives? Will jars of salsa forever replace ketchup bottles on our tables?

Probably not. Although definite changes have invaded our national diet, and few Americans eat the same way they did even a decade ago, they still eat the same things.

Hamburger, for instance, is our No. 1 meat, just as it was in the mid1980s, though now it is as likely to be served in a tortilla as in a bun.

This makes looking at the overall American diet an exercise in contradiction. One picture emerges from national statistics on what foods are consumed and how often. But that perspective can mask the thousands of small changes occurring within ethnic groups, regions of the country and individual families.

“We no longer can look at the American diet as single and homogeneous,” says Carol Smeja, a sociologist and vice president of MRCA National Marketing Information Services in Des Plaines, Ill. “There are different groups, and their patterns fluctuate. Large statistics miss many of the ups and downs.”

“We love to talk about differences, rather than similarities,” says Harry Balzer, vice president of NPD Group, a market research company in Park Ridge, Ill., “but look at it the other way. For example, of the top 10 things eaten most frequently, nine are the same for Hispanics as for non-Hispanic people. Everything but hot peppers.

“You have to look at what people are doing on a day-to-day basis as well as at the big picture. And when you do that you see that things are a lot the same.”

By first looking at dietary trends, we are better able to understand what’s happening on America’s dinner plate. Many trends are visible in consumption statistics from the Department of Agriculture and MRCA.

“Everybody thinks we are experiencing a food revolution,” Smeja says, “but what it really is is an evolution.

“Things are occurring slowly. And though there is an increasing consciousness that food influences our well-being, certainly there is no radical departure into health heaven.

“The total volume of meat may be down, for instance, but people are consuming it just as often. It is still our dominant protein. People just are eating leaner cuts and in more variety.

And often it is mixed with other ingredients as it becomes less the focus of the plate.”

On the other hand, people are 47 percent more likely to choose poultry, mostly chicken, than they were in the mid-‘80s.

And they are 30 percent less likely to eat eggs than they were 10 years ago, because of their high cholesterol content, Smeja says.

The trends for milk and soft drinks pop out.

If you aren’t drinking a can and a half of pop a day - not fruit juice or iced tea or bottled water - someone else is drinking it for you.

Positive news lurks in the milk statistics: Consumption of low-fat and skim milk has grown substantially. MRCA statistics show that Americans today are 41 percent less likely to choose whole milk and 156 percent more likely to drink skim as they were a decade ago.

The story with fruits and vegetables is more complicated. While USDA statistics show almost a 13 percent rise in the total amount of produce consumed, people report they are eating fruits and vegetables about 16 percent less frequently, says Smeja, despite constant exhortations to get five servings a day.

More produce is being shipped and used fresh, rather than processed, which could lead to greater amounts of waste due to spoilage in both homes and food establishments.

The most abundant vegetable is potatoes (most of which go for french fries), although the country’s increasingly diverse ethnic population has been responsible for bringing many more types of produce into the country, says Judith Putnam, an agricultural economist with the USDA.

“People will say they are eating more fruits and vegetables and that may be what they want to do, but when it comes down to it they aren’t,” Putnam says.