So do you think you are a healthy eater?
Odds are the answer is yes. According to a new survey from Consumer Reports, 9 out of 10 Americans describe their diet as ‘somewhat’, ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ healthy. However, a look at the statistics shows that most Americans are fooling themselves. This same report showed that 43% of those people surveyed said they drank at least one full-calorie soda, caramel Frappuccino or bubble tea per day – at least one.
Once more, a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that:
- Less than 1/3 of American adults consume 2 or more servings of fruit a day (including fruit juices, which are usually not healthy choices)
- Barely ¼ consume 3 or more servings of vegetables (keep in mind that French fries count as vegetables)
- More than two-thirds of Americans eat only one serving of fruit and vegetables each day, or skip them entirely.
Add to this that 36% of the Consumer Reports survey takers were overweight and another 21% were obese.
What does this mean? It means that asking someone if their diet is ‘healthy’ is about as accurate as hitting the broad side of a barn with a dart and saying you are a good shot.
I think one of the reasons people vastly overestimate the ‘health’ of their diets is that they don’t really know what healthy means. We’ve been inundated with marketing about food and food-like products that is misleading and simply untrue – things like ‘diet soda and/or artificial sweeteners are a healthy alternative’, ‘a burger, French fries and a soda is a meal’, ‘something that can sit on the shelf for a year is actually food’, ‘there is anything on the dollar menu that really resembles food’ and one of my favorites ‘ketchup is a vegetable’. People don’t know what a healthy diet is.
The simple fact is that people are not eating what they need to in order to be healthy. In addition to slick marketing, we’ve also been indoctrinated with things like ‘eating healthy is too expensive, too time consuming, or too hard’. When we were kids, eating your vegetables was often used for punishment or something you had to do to get to the ‘good stuff’ – like dessert. Or it could simply be that people want to eat what they want to eat and they want to feel good about it, even if they are lying to themselves and shortening their lives in the process.
Most ‘food-like products’ sell because of creative marketing – everybody is exposed to them – I’ve listed several of my ‘favorites’ above; what are some of your favorite misleading ‘healthy’ marketing slogans or campaigns?
