U.S. Diet Has Slightly Improved, Study Finds

Americans are hungry for some good news about nutrition. When the average diet of a nation is actually abbreviated to SAD—the Standard American Diet—well, who wouldn’t be? Finally there appear to be some positive findings on the food front. A study analyzed a set of nationally representative surveys, in which people were asked what they ate in the last 24 hours, from the years 1999 to 2012. The authors discovered that parts of the U.S. diet have, in fact, improved over that time span. The percentage of Americans who had what the authors determined to be “poor diets” declined, but from a colossal 56% to a still-high 46%, proving that the vast majority of Americans still don’t eat an optimal diet.