Diet quality in America has moved from an F to a D. Here’s how to turn yours into an A

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A crack of light shines through Dark clouds cloud America’s battle with poor nutrition and subsequent health issues, according to a new study that analyzed two decades of nutritional data.

“There is good news. Americans are starting to hear the nutrition message, and some companies and restaurants are starting to make healthier products. It’s a small improvement,” said senior study author and cardiologist Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food and Medicine Institute at Tufts University in Boston.

However, he said most of the improvement took place between 1999 and 2010, with no improvement in nutrition after that.

“We’ve come to a standstill as a nation — and that’s not good for our health,” Mozaffarian said. “If I were grading America on its diet, I’d give it a D — right up from an F.”

Between 1999 and 2020, the number of US adults who ate a poor diet fell from about 49% to just over 37% – an 11.4% drop, while the number of people who ate nutritionally a slightly better 10.5%, the study found.

A poor diet was defined as a diet high in refined grains, processed meats and sugary drinks, including fruit juice, as well as ultra-processed foods full of added sugar, salt and fat. Healthy options such as fruit and vegetables are very low in this style of eating.

“There has been no increase in fruit and vegetable intake during this 20-year period, which is striking,” Mozaffarian said.

An ideal diet included at least the recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables, as well as more beans, whole grains, nuts and seeds. Nutritional guidelines such as those from the American Heart Association recommend eating 4 to 5 cups a day of canned, fresh or frozen fruit and the same amount for vegetables.

There were some sugary drinks, processed meat, refined grains and ultra-processed food, which are often high in added sugars, fat and salt, the study also said in the ideal nutritional diet.

Unfortunately, the number of people who ate an ideal diet — including the 9 cups of fruit and vegetables — rose by less than 1%, the study found.

“People often ask me, ‘Well, if diet is slowly improving, why is obesity and diabetes still on the rise?’ It’s still going up because only 1.58% of Americans are on an ideal diet. We still have a long way to go,” Mozaffarian said.

More than a million Americans die each year from diet-related diseases such as obesity, cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes, according to the US Food and Drug Administration, and unhealthy diets and food insecurity cost an estimated $1.1 trillion the United States. health care spending and lost productivity each year.

“I think it’s fair to point out that diet quality is still terrible in the US. There is no secret why Americans have epidemics of obesity and diabetes and declining life expectancy,” Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston, said in an email. He was not involved in the study.

The study, published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, analyzed nutritional information on nearly 52,000 US adults who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or NHANES.

Nutritional progress was highest among women, younger adults, Hispanic adults, and people with more education and higher income who had access to private health care insurance. Less gains were seen among men, Black or older adults and those with lower incomes, lower levels of education, non-private health insurance, and food insecurity issues.

“Differences in the population in terms of education and income and race and ethnicity are the same or sometimes getting worse,” Mozaffarian said.

The study found that people on lower incomes saw a 5% improvement in diet quality, while those on higher incomes saw a 16% improvement in their nutrient score.

“We can only blame the victims of the dysfunctional US food system for the terrible diets detailed in the survey,” Willett said. “We fail to educate students about nutrition in our schools and have unhealthy food for them.

“Our health care system is almost completely lacking, we allow advertising to lure children to junk foods and drinks that kill them prematurely, and we indirectly subsidize unhealthy foods in many ways that make healthy options more expensive and less available for low people. Americans on income,” he said.

There are easy steps you can take to boost the nutritional quality of your diet, experts say.

Cook at home as often as possible: “My main recommendation is to shop at the grocery store as much as you can, rather than getting your food at a coffee shop, sandwich shop or fast-food restaurant,” Mozaffarian said.

Even eating at full service That restaurant should be limited, he said. Preliminary research by Mozaffarian and his team found that about 80% of the food Americans ate from restaurants was of poor dietary quality.

“Surprisingly, even when we compared fast food to sit-down restaurants, there wasn’t a huge difference in quality,” he said.

Instead, try to choose minimally processed foods to cook at home and avoid the heat-and-eat ready-to-eat convenience foods that are so common at the grocery store. Bring your lunch and snacks to work.

Don’t drink your sugar. Americans are starting to think that sugary sodas are unhealthy, but they haven’t yet made the connection that energy, sports and caffeinated drinks can be just as sugar-laden, Mozaffarian said.

“Energy drinks, pre-sweetened iced tea, and specialty coffee drinks can have more sugar than soda,” he said. “I see people walking out of the coffee shop with drinks and whipped cream on top. Don’t drink your sugar.”