What is the primary reason for America’s soaring obesity rates? Accord- ing to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service, women and men are eating too many calories. The USDA is not alone in that opinion.
Data from four National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) indicate that compared with thirty years ago, men reported consuming an extra 168 calories per day and women an extra 335 calories. While that might not seem like much, it adds up to a lot of extra pounds. Where are the extra calories coming from? According to the USDA, they’re from foods laden with sugar and fat: sweetened soft drinks, fried snack foods, fast food, rich pastries, and the like. It stands to reason that if those are the foods that are adding fat to our waistlines, cutting back on them—or their calorie- laden ingredients—is key to losing weight.
Data from four National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) indicate that compared with thirty years ago, men reported consuming an extra 168 calories per day and women an extra 335 calories. While that might not seem like much, it adds up to a lot of extra pounds. Where are the extra calories coming from? According to the USDA, they’re from foods laden with sugar and fat: sweetened soft drinks, fried snack foods, fast food, rich pastries, and the like. It stands to reason that if those are the foods that are adding fat to our waistlines, cutting back on them—or their calorie- laden ingredients—is key to losing weight.
To their credit, many women and men are working to reduce the amount of sugar and fat they are eating. But the strategies the genders use to accomplish that tend to vary. It seems that the strategies that men and women prefer to reduce sugar intake are similar, but when it comes to getting fat out of the diet, they choose different paths.
In terms of cutting back on sugar, Weight Watchers research has found that women are more likely than men to cut out sweets like desserts and candy. The same research found that the use of sugar-free products is about the same between the sexes. By far, diet soft drinks are the most frequently consumed sugar-free products. There was a time when your typical guy would not be caught dead drinking a diet cola, weight problem or no weight problem. Those days are gone, how- ever. In today’s world, sugar-free soft drinks are now the beverage of choice for a lot of guys, and there is no stigma attached to them, weight problem or no weight problem
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