America’s Top 5 Favorite Foods — Reshuffled

Healthy eating advice seems to be reshuffling the list of America’s top five favorite foods. Fruit is up, juice is down, veggies are flat. That’s the news from the NPD Group, which just published their latest report on eating patterns in America.

In the last ten years, fruit has moved up the list, passing milk, veggies, and fizzy drinks. Along with fruit, bottled water and yogurt are rising through the ranks of what we eat. Fizzy drinks dropped from second to fourth, while milk dropped from fourth to fifth.

Fruit’s gain is juice’s loss because juice has been dropping just as fast as fruit is gaining. Veggies have not budged, says Harry Balzer of NPD, because they require more preparation than fruit.

You might be thinking: not so fast — get those veggies up! First lady Michelle Obama beat you to it. Last week she and Elmo (of Sesame Street fame) announced a deal to license Sesame Street characters for free to the Produce Marketing Association and sell more veggies to kids.

Balzer sees a benefit in these trends:

People are getting a handle on weight gain in this country. We may not yet be losing weight, but we’ve stopped gaining weight. You get a sense that the obesity trend has stabilized.

NPD tracks self-reported BMI and says that the rate of people with a BMI greater than 25 in their dataset has not grown since 2003. They saw the rate of obesity stabilize in 2011.

Perhaps if we eat enough fruits and veggies, the obesity rate will start to decline. You think?

Click here to read more from USA Today, here to read more from NPD, and here to read more from NPR.

Enjoying Every Bite, photograph © Bruce Tuten / flickr

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