Cream cheese - part of the best food group (fat).
Monday 4 August 2008 by kinakoJam
American obesity has doubled since 1980.
The Times published a table from the Agriculture department comparing food consumption in 1970 and now-ish.
The foods with the biggest increase in consumption are spinach, garlic, cream cheese and corn sweeteners. Spinach, garlic and corn sweeteners, one can think of obvious reasons why they might've increased.
But cream cheese? Maybe the 350% increase in production can be accounted for as a new baking ingredient (cakes etc). Maybe it used to be more of an 'East coast thing' whereas now it's frequently used in place of butter. Any Americans who can remember the early '70s care to comment?
Maybe there's a new trend in sweet spinach garlic chicken cream cheese pies.
"In 1970, the average American ate about 16.4 pounds of food a week, or 2.3 pounds daily. By 2006, the average intake grew by an additional 1.8 pounds a week. (...)An extra half pound of fat weekly - mostly from oils and shortening. That doesn't count the fat in the extra quarter pound of meat Americans now eat every seven days. Those fats were somewhat offset by a steep drop in dairy consumption, the only major food group to have a decline, primarily in milk drinking. (But we do love our cheese. More and more of it.)"
The Times published a table from the Agriculture department comparing food consumption in 1970 and now-ish.
The foods with the biggest increase in consumption are spinach, garlic, cream cheese and corn sweeteners. Spinach, garlic and corn sweeteners, one can think of obvious reasons why they might've increased.
But cream cheese? Maybe the 350% increase in production can be accounted for as a new baking ingredient (cakes etc). Maybe it used to be more of an 'East coast thing' whereas now it's frequently used in place of butter. Any Americans who can remember the early '70s care to comment?
Maybe there's a new trend in sweet spinach garlic chicken cream cheese pies.
"In 1970, the average American ate about 16.4 pounds of food a week, or 2.3 pounds daily. By 2006, the average intake grew by an additional 1.8 pounds a week. (...)An extra half pound of fat weekly - mostly from oils and shortening. That doesn't count the fat in the extra quarter pound of meat Americans now eat every seven days. Those fats were somewhat offset by a steep drop in dairy consumption, the only major food group to have a decline, primarily in milk drinking. (But we do love our cheese. More and more of it.)"
The 1970s was when US supermarkets began to stock bagels: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990DE2D61F31F935A15751C1A960958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2 . Maybe the cream cheese followed.
interesting...
i love those cinnamon raisin ones you get at supermarkets all over north america.
loosely defined 'bagel'.