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The Hot Pot

The Hot Pot is a goulash of news, opinions and advice about designing food products and other issues affecting our industry. Its moderator and sometimes contributor is Lynn A. Kuntz, editor of Food Product Design. A lifetime of food-industry experience, first in the trenches and currently via the written word, has shaped her knowledge base and her opinions―and she's not afraid to use either of them.

U.S. Obesity: Must Be the HFCS

August 4, 2008 Comments

Posted in Blog

The New York Times reported on the USDA’s latest food availability data (the amount of food produced for the average American consumer, minus various measures of waste) which tallies up the total for 2006. According to the data, the average American ate approximately 18.2 lbs. of food a week, vs. the 16.4 weekly lbs. they consumed in 1970.

Let’s do the math: We’ll be kind and say only 30% of that additional 1.8 lbs. of food was fat; perhaps that will counterbalance any low-calorie foods eaten. That comes out to nearly 4500 additional calories per week times 52 weeks per year...need I say more?

-Lynn A. Kuntz