The saying “you are what you eat” is generally just a reminder to eat good and healthy things. If it were a literal assessment of people and their diets, then the world would be a weird and messy place because the average person eats a lot of questionable things. In fact, the average appetite is probably a lot more bizarre than you ever realized.
10. The Average Person Consumes Over 57 Pounds of Sugar Per Year
We get told for most of our lives that we need to lay off sugar. There’s sugar in everything and if you get too much sugar, you’ll rot your teeth, become hyperactive and then obese and then diabetic. Sugar, it seems, is the cause of most of our ills. Or it’s not. The rules change and nowadays we seem to be pretty confident that moderate natural sugars are fine but maybe try to ease up on the refined sugars and things like corn syrup and fructose.
Regardless of where you get your sugar from, you may be surprised to find out how much of it we’re all consuming. The numbers vary a bit from source to source, and when dealing with averages maybe that’s not surprising, but it seems like the average adult is consuming 57 to 60 pounds of added sugar per year. That’s added sugar, not naturally occurring sugars in things like fruits. Children consume a few pounds more per year.
If you’re worried about your own sugar intake, take a look in your cup. Almost half of that added sugar comes from drinks. That includes everything from soft drinks to tea and coffee that people tend to add sugar to.
9. Average Meat Eater Consumes 7,000 to 27,000 Animals
Global stats on veganism and vegetarianism can vary significantly from country to country. For instance, only 5% of Americans are vegetarian while 24% of Indians are. That means a large percentage of the world is still consuming meat. How much meat everyone eats is pretty remarkable.
This is another one of those stats that’s hard to nail down with precision accuracy, but you can get an idea of the sheer numbers based on the data that is available. In 2015, the Vegetarian Calculator came up with an algorithm it said could identify how many animals you saved by being a vegetarian or a vegan. Over an average person’s lifetime they claimed, if you were a meat eater, you would eat 7,000 animals including 11 cows, 27 pigs and 2,400 chickens.
In 2022, data on Vox suggested that the average American was eating 25 land animals per year, with 23 of those being chickens. Factor in seafood and the yearly total rises to 174, with the bulk of that (137) being shellfish like shrimp.
If the average American lives 77 years, and you shave off a year for the time you won’t be eating too many steaks and ribs as a baby, you have potentially 76 years of eating 174 animals a year. That works out to 13,224 animals. That’s 1,748 chickens, 912 fish, 25 pigs, and 7.6 whole cows.
Now, if you head to the Vegetarian Calculator today, some years after that 2015 story about people eating 7,000 animals a year, the numbers have changed. Plug in 76 years to their calculator and they claim you’ve saved the lives of 15,352 animals. Even more dramatic, if you go to their vegan calculator the numbers rise to 27,758 animals not eaten in 76 years.
The range we have now is over 20,000 animals. So which number is most accurate? Maybe it doesn’t matter since, however you slice it, you’re slicing up a lot of animals.
8. You Probably Eat a Pound or Two of Bugs Per Year
Not everything you eat in a year is eaten on purpose so as a little palate cleanser, let’s look at what the average American eats without realizing it. Federal food regulations dictate what can and cannot get into the food we eat and they have a little wiggle room. For instance, while no one wants to eat bugs it’s literally impossible to guarantee food won’t contain bugs, so there is an acceptable standard for bugs that make it into the food you eat.
By one estimate you’re probably eating around two pounds of bugs of various kinds in any given year. That may sound harrowing but that’s the good number. When you see what the FDA allows it gets much worse.
Pasta is allowed to contain 225 insect fragments. A box of raisins can have 33 fruit fly eggs in it. Got a can of mushrooms in the cupboard? It can have up to 19 maggots in it. If you’re moved to enjoy fig paste at any time, be aware that there can be 13 insect heads per 100 grams.
For a fun read, check out the FDA’s whole list which lets you know not just how many bugs but how much mold, rotten food, rat hair and mammalian excrete can be in any given food product.
7. The Average American 40 Pounds of Cheese Per Year
Do you like cheese? If you do, you’re far from alone. Europeans are at the cutting edge of cheese consumption with the average French person eating 57 pounds per year. In America, it was a lower but still respectable 40 pounds per year in 2020. That went up five pounds over 10 years.
Back in 1977, Americans were only eating a paltry 16 pounds of cheese per year. The reason for such a dramatic increase in cheese consumption is harder to pin down but you can make some educated guesses. For instance, as we’ll see shortly, Americans also love pizza. As pizza consumption increases so too much cheese consumption or else you’re doing it wrong.
6. The Average American Has Nearly 500 Alcoholic Drinks Per Year
Excessive drinking is something a lot of people worry about and there are some serious repercussions that can happen when people overindulge. But this is often looked at on an individual basis – you’ll hear about a drunk driver in an isolated incident. On a large scale, alcohol consumption numbers are pretty remarkable.
Based on per capita consumption, the average American drinks 1.35 alcoholic beverages every day. That works out to 494 drinks per year. The CDC says 33.7% of adult Americans don’t drink any alcohol at all, so the word “average” in that 494 drinks stat is doing some heavy lifting. Not to mention the fact that, because it’s an average, it’s also including everyone under the legal drinking age. Adjusted for age, 494 becomes 705. If it was adjusted again to account for the 33% of non-drinkers, it’d be close to 1,000.
On a global scale, the average yearly consumption of alcohol, per person 15 years of age and older, is just over 6.18 liters. That’s pure alcohol however, not just alcoholic drinks. For instance, if wine is 12% alcohol then to achieve six liters you’d drink 53 bottles.
Czechs consumed just under an average of 15 liters of pure alcohol per year at the high end of the scale along with Ugandans at just over 15. Americans consumed 9.87 liters.
5. Americans Eat a Staggering Amount of Pizza
In 2020 there were just over 78,000 pizza places in America. So it’s a safe bet that Americans love pizza, and why not? Bread, cheese, sauce, that’s a good combo. With all of that pizza available, you have to wonder just how much people are consuming to keep all of those places in business. Turns out the answer is a lot.
CiCi’s Pizza polled 1,000 Americans and came up with the number 6,000. That’s how many slices the average American will take down in their lifetime. Their survey also suggested one third of people eat pizza every single week while the USDA one-upped them with the stat that 13% of Americans eat pizza every single day. One in four males aged 6 to 19 will eat it every day. In a year, you’ll demolish 23 pounds of it.
To accomplish these numbers, those 78,000 restaurants produce three billion pizzas per year.
4. The Average American Spends 10% of Their Income on Fast Food
Most of us are well aware that fast food isn’t healthy, but the fact is a lot of it does taste really good. This is a fact proven by the sheer bulk of numbers. Over 36% of American adults will be eating fast food on any given day. In dollars and cents, the average American spends 10% of the entire annual income on fast food.
And while a lot of people are quick to dismiss this as a thing lower income people do, the opposite is true. 42% of higher income earners eat fast food on any given day, while that number drops to 31.7% for lower income earners.
3. Americans Drink 38 to 44 Gallons of Soda Per Year
Coca-Cola had revenue of $38.6 billion in 2021. Pepsico had over $79 billion in revenue in 2021. While both companies sell more than just soft drinks, they’re also both chiefly known for that aspect of their business and you can safely assume a good chunk of that revenue came from soft drinks. So how much is the average person drinking?
In 2013, the average American was consuming 44 gallons of soda per year. There are about 10 cans in a gallon, though there are different sizes available, so that means the average American was drinking about 440 cans per year.
By 2018 that number was down to 38.87 gallons per person so, while still high, it does seem to be on a downward trend. And for what it’s worth, this is all soda, not just ones made with sugar.
2. The Average American Child Eats 1,500 Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches
Peanut butter and jelly is a staple for many kids in the Western world. It may not be as welcome in schools these days thanks to peanut allergies which actually only affect 1% of the population, and bans that don’t really work either because accidental exposure is the same in places that do ban them as those that don’t. But that doesn’t mean people, especially kids, can’t still enjoy them at home.
The average American eats a respectable 2,984 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in their lifetime, based on a 2016 survey. According to the National Peanut Board, a full half of those will be eaten by children before they graduate.
As a bit of a contrast, the average European is not nearly on the same peanut butter plane as an American and will consume less than one tablespoon of peanut butter per year.
1. The Average American Eats Almost 2,000 Pounds of Food Per Year
A stat most people seem to know is that the average adult needs to eat about 2,000 calories a day as part of a healthy diet. As an average this can vary a lot based on your fitness and activity levels, but it’s sort of the standard the industry goes by. But how much food is that? And what does that equal in a year?
There aren’t a lot of fresh numbers on this topic but in 2011, the Department of Agriculture calculated that the average American eats 1,996 pounds of food every year. That’s a large rhinoceros.
Of that almost one ton of food, 85 pounds is just fat and oil. On an upside, 273 pounds is fruit, and 415 pounds is vegetables. Wheat and grains contributed 197 pounds. Dairy came in at a stunning 630 pounds. Meat was a relatively conservative 185 pounds. And if you have a sweet tooth, maybe it’s not a surprise that 141 pounds is just sweeteners.
Despite that 2,000 calorie a day figure, the average American was also consuming between 2,700 and 3,663 calories per day.