What America is Eating (Fat Fat Fatty!)

“*Disconcerting gurgling noise*”

~America’s Belly

Did you know that America loves to eat?  Haha, trick question, any true American has the answer “yes” engraved to their souls, and everyone who spent a moment pondering that just got brutally mugged by thieves who decided to take advantage of the distraction.  The only reason California eats healthy food is to trick other countries in thinking that at least some of us are healthy, and even they have to deal with In-N-Out burgers to distract them.  But how much exactly do your typical Americans eat?

Well, about a ton a year.  Yes, we’re serious.

Let’s take a look at…

What America is Eating (Fat Fat Fatty!)

So it has been determined that every year, the average American will eat 1,996 pounds of food.  Given that there are 365 days in a year, and that we don’t know how to do math, we can only assume that it means that we eat one hundred pounds of food every day.  Or maybe less.  Yeah, a hundred seems high.  But still, lots of food, y’all.  NPR decided to break down the numbers, collected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and oh wait you’ve stopped reading because you got up to make yourself a sandwich.  Shit, wait, come back!

Okay we’ll just list the food categories for you then.

Dairy:  630 pounds

Yup, we Americans love taking advantage of cows.  The average American consume six bulimic models worth of dairy every year, which includes milk, yogurt, cheese, and ice cream.  Upon hearing that, we were a little disappointed to find that only 31 pounds of this total comes from cheese.  That seems low, doesn’t it?  We love cheese in America, we put it on everything from our pizzas to our hamburgers to the linings of our arteries.  Cheese is so popular, it was once almost elected as our vice president (citation needed) and when an American male registers to vote, he is forced to sign a contract saying that if he ever meets a sentient woman (or man, if that is his sexual preference) made entirely out of animated cheese, he is forced to marry that person.  And that’s in the constitution.

So really?  Only 31 pounds of cheese a year?  There are Americans who can probably put away 31 pounds of cheese in a day.  That’s fucking gross, but it’s true.  We’re forced to believe that either they meant to say “310 pounds” or the rest of the difference is made up in ice cream consumption.  Because 500 pounds of ice cream a year sound about right.

Vegetables:  415 pounds

Shh, shh, it’s okay, it’s okay, no we can explain, shh, it’s okay.  We can show you the silver lining in this.  It’s mostly corn and potatoes.  Shh.  Those aren’t even healthy, right?  Just pretend that we’re eating 415 pounds of French fries, potato chips, and grilled corn-on-the-cobs doused in butter at the state fair.

…Actually, that’s very probably where this high number is coming from.  See?  We told you everything was going to be alright.

Fruits:  273 pounds

We’re so remarkably ambivalent about this fact we’re going to just keep going.  It doesn’t affect us one way or another.  Fruit is okay, we guess.

Wheat and Grains:  197 pounds

See, this is another one that doesn’t particularly impact us one way or another.  Yes, we like bread, and grains are important for a lot of essential food groups, like pizza and hamburger buns, and most of this is likely white bread which, we’ve been told, is not healthy for some reason or another.

Meat and Poultry:  185 pounds

Yes.  This is great.  We love to see this.  Goddamn it, we love meat here, that is just perfect.  Now, we know what you’re thinking.  “Excellent, we eat roughly one Johnny Knox worth of meat every year.  That’s a great statistic to think about.  But still, I would have thought that we…eat more than that?”

But we do, America.  See, this statistic isn’t just for Americans, it’s for people who live in America.  Which means Vegetarians and Vegans count towards this statistic.  Which means that the rest of us, God bless us, eat more meat than that.  200 pounds a year sound right to you?  Of course it does.  Let’s try to make this number higher.

Sweeteners:  141 pounds

Ha, okay, so this one is actually a little gross.  We eat 141 pounds of sweeteners (think sugar and high fructose corn syrup) a year.  We eat almost as much sugar, in pure weight, than we do meat.  That’s gross, right?  We mean, we support it because it’s not healthy but…damn…

Fats:  85 pounds

Ewwww.

Liquor:  A million pounds

Okay so we may have made up that one.  For some reason they don’t track the weight of booze that Americans drink, but, it has to be more than the amount of food, right?  Right?  Or is that us?  Is it…wrong to consume more alcohol, in terms of weight, than food?  Because if it’s wrong, well, then we don’t want to be right.  We just want to be American.