Posted on Mon 08 March 2010

Weird dietary habits in the US

Using this database of food consumption data the blog Canibais e Reis kindly put together, I calculated all values for which the US was at least 2 standard deviations from the world average.

Here are the outliers in standard deviations from the world mean:

Poultry.Meat..kcal.day…2003 2.5
Soybean.Oil..kcal.day…2003 4.5
Sugar…Sweeteners..kcal.day…2003 2.1
Sugar..Raw.Equivalent..kcal.day…2003 2.1
Vegetable.Oils..kcal.day…2003 2.1

Lots of sugar and Omega 6 fatty acids. Not very healthy.

In case you were wondering, the only weird dietary habit in Mexico is (ahem) a high consumption of beans, 3 standard deviations above the world average. Since I suspected maize was also an outlier but it wasn’t included in the database, I downloaded the 2005 data from the FAO website and indeed, Mexico is also an outlier in maize consumption. I bet if soft drink consumption were tracked, Mexico would also be an outlier.
The code is here and the data is here



Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, and code samples are licensed under the Apache 2.0 License. Privacy policy

Disclaimer: This website is not affiliated with any of the organizations or institutions to which Diego Valle-Jones belongs. All opinions are my own.

Special Projects:

Blogs I like: