A lot of things that I've read (articles, studies, etc) have stated that the "average" American eats between 1800-2500 calories a day. Which is fairly in line with what the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) is that the government has formulated as a guideline.
But that brings up a question though: If the "average" American is eating within the range of the RDA, then why are we now in a position where 66% of the population is either overweight or obese?
One answer that seems simple enough is that we aren't as active anymore like we were 10, 20, 30 years ago. But can that really be the entire reason? Simply a result of no activity (supposedly)?
Then I came across this chart that was published by the United Nations and it shows what they average caloric consumption for Americans was for various time periods:
The "average" American is consuming over 3700 calories a day? That can't be right!!
But, think about it. Don't think about it in the sense of the number of calories that you're eating day in and day out. Think of the number of calories that you're eating within a week, or within a month, or within a year and then average it out from there.
Sure, maybe most of the time on a plurality of days you're eating between 2000-2500 calories. But think about those times when you're out to dinner. Or you're at a party. You snack on a few things here and there (but it's more than "here or there"). For some reason in your mind you don't think of them as real "calories." You're not hungry, but you just keep putting those chips in your mouth.
Or you stop at a fast food place once a week. That value meal isn't that bad. But in reality, you just stuffed down a 2000 calorie meal in 10 minutes, and that's on top of the rest of the calories you ate during the day.
When you look at it in those terms, I don't think it's out of the question that it's possible that over a course of the year, the average American eats 3790 calories a day.
Even if you think that's way off and you wanted to be a little more conservative, I think it would be hard to argue that the average American consumes 3000 calories a day.
Think about it in this terms of soda. We'll use Mountain Dew as an example. In a 20 ounce bottle of mountain dew (and let's be realistic, if you're going to drink soda, the vast majority of people are going to drink a 20 ouncer), there are 275 calories. I don't think it's out of the realm of possibilities that a large segment of American Society drinks 3, 20-ounce bottles of soda in one day. So that's already 825 calories in one day. If you throw on 2500 more calories in actual food that a person might take in one day, you're at 3325 calories in a single day.
This is on a "normal, average" day. when you throw in the outliers such as parties, bar night, baseball game, etc, then you're bumping it up even more.
So overall, I think we need to stop lying to ourselves into thinking that on average, we're only consuming 1800-2500 calories a day, because in the bigger picture, it just doesn't make sense. The longer we keep lying to ourselves about this, the large the waistline of this country is going to get.
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