{"id":14176,"date":"2014-05-23T13:00:13","date_gmt":"2014-05-23T18:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/%year%\/%monthnum%\/%day%\/chart-of-the-week-is-food-too-cheap-for-our-own-good\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T03:21:43","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T08:21:43","slug":"chart-of-the-week-is-food-too-cheap-for-our-own-good","status":"publish","type":"short-read","link":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2014\/05\/23\/chart-of-the-week-is-food-too-cheap-for-our-own-good\/","title":{"rendered":"Chart of the Week: Is food too cheap for our own good?"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.3322\/caac.21237\/pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2014\/05\/food_expenditure.png\" alt=\"chart of food expenditures as percent of disposable income\" ><\/a><\/figure>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As you scarf down burgers and potato salad this long Memorial Day weekend, consider this: Americans have the cheapest food in history, and that unprecedented abundance is largely responsible for why we&#8217;re so fat.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to a new article in <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.3322\/caac.21237\/pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians<\/a>, Americans in the 1930s spent a quarter of their disposable income on food. That share has fallen steadily through the decades, to the point where today less than 10% of Americans&#8217; disposable dollars go for food. (That varies across income groups, of course: The poorest 20% of Americans still spend about a third of their disposable income on food.)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And even as the real cost of food goes down, each dollar we spend buys us more calories than it used to. The average American&#8217;s total caloric intake (adjusted for spoilage and other waste) rose from 2,109 calories in 1970 to 2,568 calories in 2010, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ers.usda.gov\/data-products\/food-availability-(per-capita)-data-system\/.aspx#.U39y-vldV8E\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">U.S. Department of Agriculture<\/a> data &#8212; the equivalent of an extra <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calobonga.com\/calorieCounter\/food\/21123\/1\/calorie-counter.lz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">steak sandwich<\/a>\u00a0every day. Little surprise, then, that more than <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/data\/databriefs\/db131.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">78 million<\/a> U.S. adults, or\u00a034.9%, were obese in 2011-12 &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/data\/hestat\/obesity_adult_09_10\/obesity_adult_09_10.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">more than twice<\/a> the rate found in a 1976-1980 health survey.<\/p>\n\n<p>[I]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Americans spend less on food than they ever have, and are fatter than they&#8217;ve ever been. Could there be a connection?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":145,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"sub_headline":"","sub_title":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"relatedPosts":[],"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"displayBylines":true,"footnotes":"","prc_watchers":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0},"categories":[105,267],"bylines":[842],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[467],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[515],"research-teams":[],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-14176","short-read","type-short-read","status-publish","hentry","category-health-policy","category-medicine-health","bylines-drew-desilver","formats-short-read","regions-countries-united-states"],"label":"Short Read","post_parent":0,"word_count":190,"canonical_url":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/short-reads\/2014\/05\/23\/chart-of-the-week-is-food-too-cheap-for-our-own-good\/","art_direction":false,"_embeds":[],"watchers":[],"table_of_contents":[],"datacite_doi":"","prc_seo_data":{"title":"Chart of the Week: Is food too cheap for our own good?","description":"Americans spend less on food than they ever have, and are fatter than they've ever been. Could there be a connection?","og_title":"Chart of the Week: Is food too cheap for our own good?","og_description":"Americans spend less on food than they ever have, and are fatter than they've ever been. Could there be a connection?","schema_type":"Article","noindex":false,"canonical_url":"","primary_terms":[],"custom_schema":[],"og_image":0,"indexnow_submitted_at":null,"gsc_index_status":null},"prepublish_checks":{},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"relatedPostsOrdered":[],"bylinesOrdered":[{"key":"b4c479ea6e9e1e003b72aecd3177ad30","termId":842}],"acknowledgementsOrdered":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/14176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/short-read"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/145"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14176"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/14176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103657,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/short-read\/14176\/revisions\/103657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14176"},{"taxonomy":"bylines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bylines?post=14176"},{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=14176"},{"taxonomy":"datasets","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/datasets?post=14176"},{"taxonomy":"_post_visibility","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_post_visibility?post=14176"},{"taxonomy":"formats","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/formats?post=14176"},{"taxonomy":"_fund_pool","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_fund_pool?post=14176"},{"taxonomy":"languages","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/languages?post=14176"},{"taxonomy":"regions-countries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions-countries?post=14176"},{"taxonomy":"research-teams","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-teams?post=14176"},{"taxonomy":"workflow-status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beta.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/workflow-status?post=14176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}