Startling statistic - 89.7% of Americans are healthy eaters?
By Sharon at RealSelf on 22 Jan 2011
Apparently that's what we think! A survey from Consumer Reports found that 89.7% of Americans believe they have healthy diets. Two-thirds of Americans are also overweight or obese, btw.
I understand how people fall into this trap because our household was (is?) under the same false belief. We used to think that we only ate an occasional delivery meal, when in actuality we were eating out 3x per week (and we weren't ordering salads, either). For us, it took a long time to sink in that a "treat" can't happen every day; every time you have a special event; every time you have a bad day at work or just don't feel like cooking. We're still working on this, btw! It's a hard habit to break.
So, do you think you have a healthy diet?
I can understand why people think they're healthy eaters. These days you can get anything in a "light" format, from Mayo to cream. But just because you're eating the half-fat version doesn't mean it's actually good for you.
People are also working more and relying on convience foods to fill in for what used to be a healthy, home cooked meal.
I thought I was eating pretty healthily until I really started to look at what I was eating. It's easy to give yourself a false sense of security about your lifestyle, but if most people really looked at the labels, they may think twice before picking up that "half fat" tub of butter!