Americans Love Animals. They Love To Eat Them.

Using Statistics from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), economists gathered data to estimate the amount of food, by weight, Americans eat per year.  It turns out that the average American eats 1996 lbs of food (almost one ton) each year.

Americans eat, on average,  630 lbs of dairy products – including milk, cheese, yogurt and ice cream, which represents 31.5 % of our overall food consumption by weight.

The average American eats 185 lbs of meat fish and poultry.  So over 40% of the food Americans eat are animal products!  Because these food products are calorie dense, the percentage of calories that come from animal products is well above 40% of our total calories.

 You may be surprised that Americans eat 273 lbs of fruit and 415 lbs of vegetables per year which represents 34% of our overall food consumption by weight.  However, much of the weight in fruits and vegetables is water and fiber – neither of which contain calories. These are foods low in calorie density.  Therefore, the percentage of calories coming from fruits and vegetables is much lower than 34%.

 These numbers reveal how far removed most Americans are from eating a Whole Food Plant Based diet (WFPB).  Any serious attempt at reducing the incidence of coronary artery disease (CAD), type II diabetes and other common chronic diseases must involve educating Americans on the foods that are killing us prematurely – dairy, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, oil, refined sugars and flours.