Jennifer Lovejoy, PhD, Vice President, Clinical Development & Support:

I never knew whether the nutrition experts who coined the term “Standard American Diet,” with its abbreviation “S.A.D.,” were deliberately being tongue-in-cheek or not.  Regardless, all evidence is that our diets overall in the U.S. are indeed pretty sad and have only gotten sadder in recent years.

According to a study published by Briefel and Johnson in the Annual Review of Nutrition, since the 1970s our total calorie intake has increased by about 150-200 calories per day.  This increase is attributed mainly to the fact that more of us are eating outside the home and that portion sizes have increased dramatically (think “Super-Size Me”).  While this may not seem like much, this increase in calories can lead to a 5-10 pound weight gain in a year!

The percentage of carbohydrate in our diets has also increased in recent decades, largely due to increases in sugars.  The added sweetener story itself is particularly alarming – since 1960 total added sweeteners have increased by 33% but cane and beet sugar use has actually decreased by 33% while corn-based sweeteners such as high-fructose corn syrup have increased by a whopping 1060%.  Along with the increase in sugars there has been an increase in added fats, which have gone up 86% in the past 30 years according to the USDA.

But, apart from changes in various nutrients, what really makes the American diet “SAD” is our over-reliance on processed foods.  According to a recent New York Times article, “Americans eat 31 percent more packaged food than fresh food, and they consume more packaged food per person than their counterparts in nearly all other countries. A sizable part of the American diet is ready-to-eat meals, like frozen pizzas and microwave dinners, and sweet or salty snack foods.” Because processed food is so high in sugar, fat and salt, it is a major contributor to our obesity epidemic and the related epidemics of type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases.

I often wonder how it happened that we as Americans have lost sight of the fact that healthy food is fresh food.  I recently heard a presentation by a nutrition researcher who works with immigrant populations in the U.S.  He described how, to these populations who moved here from other countries, “nutritious food” by definition means “fresh, local food”.  They don’t trust “American food” (i.e. supermarket food) because they don’t know where it came from, who grew it or raised it, or how long ago it was picked.  My guess is that 50 years ago, almost all Americans would have defined nutritious food as fresh food.  Somehow in recent decades, we have been duped by the processed food industry to believe that buying food in packages, especially if it has a shelf-life of many years and has designer additives, is “healthy” for us.

A few weeks ago I was visiting Whidbey Island, one of our beautiful islands in the Puget Sound area, and I stopped by a local farm that sold fresh produce, honey, and cheese.  I talked to the cheese shop owner, who had all sorts of wonderful local and artisan cheeses available, and she shared a sad story.  She told me that she was thinking of changing her stock because, during summer tourist season, almost everyone who came to her shop was looking for processed cheese – Velveeta and “Cheez-Whiz” – for their picnics.  The freshly made local cheese didn’t sell as well as it seemed “non-food” processed cheese would and she worried about her bottom line.  I encouraged her to resist giving in to the current epidemic of bad taste but to help those who came to her shop to remember their roots.  There was a time when, if you were eating cheese, you probably knew whose cow the milk came from.  And that really wasn’t all that long ago!

So, come on America, let’s give up our “SAD” diet habits and remember who we are and how healthy and happy we were before “Big Food” came along to convince us that packaged food was the best choice.  With all the farmers’ markets and fresh food options available to us (including, ironically, online options), we can get back to our “food roots” and reclaim our health.