The "junk" food habit knows no age bounds, the first study of its kind indicates.
A new survey of 63,380 Americans shows consumption of high-fat pizzas and salt-laden chips has increased by as much as 143 percent over the past 20 years among all age groups -- not just the kids and teens thought most susceptible to the snack attack -- padding the way to a growing obesity epidemic, scientists said Friday.
Diets rich in what marketers like to refer to as "high-energy foods" and nutritionists tend to designate as wastelands of empty calories have been linked to diabetes, hypertension, stroke, arthritis, heart disease and some cancers, researchers told United Press International.
"Our study shows these foods ... represent a large and important component of our diet and are increasing in caloric contribution to our diet," said Samara Joy Nielsen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, lead author of the article published in the journal Obesity Research.
The largest, most comprehensive such analysis, which incorporated data from several food intake surveys dating back to 1977 and current interviews about Americans' eating habits, revealed no stage of life guarantees immunity to the nutritionally incorrect.
"Dietary patterns are rapidly shifting in the United States, and these changes are important contributors to the growing epidemic of obesity and diabetes facing Americans," said study co-author Barry Popkin, professor of nutrition at the UNC School of Public Health.
"This new study makes an important contribution by showing how uniform the changes in the types of food eaten and the locations of food consumption are across all age groups. This is not a problem that only faces teens or young adults but one that faces all Americans."
All age groups studied -- 2-18, 19-39, 40-59 and 60 and older -- showed increasing favoritism toward soft drinks, pizza, hamburgers, cheeseburgers, french fries, candy and salty snacks. Those over 39 also had a special affinity for desserts, a temptation more easily overcome by the younger set, the study showed.
"We found that even though the two younger age groups were consuming more of these foods, they were still eating them in the same proportion to other age groups as they were 25 years ago," Nielsen said.
While consumers have been eating less low- and medium-fat milk products and less medium- and high-fat beef and pork, their taste for junk food appears unabated. In 1977, for example, snacks produced 11.3 percent of the average American's energy intake. By 1996, that figure had climbed to 17.7 percent -- more than a 50 percent increase.
"Although the elderly still snack the least, with 14 percent of their energy coming from junk foods, they have had the largest jump in snacking, up from 7.7 percent in 1977, which is almost double," Nielsen said. "Among people under age 39, pizza and salty snack consumption rose as much as 143 percent."
Public health officials expressed concern over the results.
"It seems like the elderly are buying into the unhealthy eating habits of their younger cohorts, for whatever reasons -- ready availability of snacks, convenience of eating out, pressure in their lives," Richard Levinson, associate executive director of the American Public Health Association in Washington, said in a telephone interview.
"What we were hoping for is that the youth would take on some of the healthier habits of the pre-frozen-dinner generation. Instead, what the study says is that all segments of society are becoming less healthy in their eating habits, and that's very disturbing."
The study also found that all age groups ate more restaurant food -- including fast food -- than a generation ago.
"The implications are that people are eating more food outside the home and more food that someone else is preparing, i.e. prepackaged," Popkin told UPI. "These indicate we need to focus on some different intervention points such as grocery stores, restaurants and the food industry far more than we do."
While the U.S. girth gain of the past few decades has been blamed on too much eating combined with too little exercise, each trend on its own can have adverse consequences, researchers said.
"We have independent evidence that sedentary people eating good diets do better in terms of morbidity and mortality than those who eat poor diets, and it's been demonstrated that physical activity also decreases morbidity and mortality," Levinson said. "Presumably their effects are complimentary, if not additive, but both independently can have positive effects."
As many as one in five Americans -- up from one in eight in 1991 -- is considered obese, a condition defined as being more than 30 percent above the ideal weight based on height. Super-sizing is not confined to adults. Rates of obesity among U.S. children have doubled over the past two decades. Overweight youngsters are being diagnosed with respiratory illnesses, sleep disturbances, diabetes and other obesity-related disorders once reserved for adults. The costs, in health-care and related expenses, top $70 billion annually, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
"We need to see this as a major epidemic worthy of serious public action," Popkin told UPI. "These changes are occurring worldwide, and it is clear that major changes in the way we live and work as well as eat are being caused by significant changes in our environment. The fact that our results are comparable across all age groups indicates that these are quite general changes."
The shifts are most pronounced in affluent societies in Western Europe and North America, he said.
It is a problem of both quantity and quality.
"We are absolutely consuming far too much food," Nielsen said. "At the same time the composition of the food we consume has a lot to do with the total amount we eat. If we ate more fruits and vegetables and other higher fiber filling food, we would consume fewer calories."
The implications are age-specific.
"We have among the elderly two sets of issues," Popkin told UPI. "Obesity is critical for most, but for others inadequate intake and muscle loss occur and then we must shift toward more energy-dense foods."
Because the old ways have failed, America needs new approaches to deal with its expanding waistline, scientists said.
Persuading adults to improve their nutritional intake is especially important not only for their own well-being but also because they set the example -- and provide the funds for food purchases -- for their children, the study authors told UPI.
"In the dark ages of health promotion and disease prevention, we focused entirely on the young, and not totally inappropriately. It was thought that at a certain age, it is too late and that nothing can be done to affect future health," Levinson said. "We now recognize that health promotion and disease prevention are important at every life cycle."
The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
