If You Are What You Eat, America Tastes Like Chicken

U.S. eating habits have undergone a slow transformation since the 1970s, as shown through annual consumption data tracked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And it’s not a simple story of expanding waistlines and new ways to pig out. By looking at when different foods found peak favor and comparing their rises and falls, key moments can be isolated in the story of American eating.

In some ways, U.S. diets are richer in fresh produce and variety than ever, reflecting improved supply chains and technology that keeps food from spoiling. Greater food diversity has reflected greater population diversity, with avocados and mangoes going from almost unheard-of delicacies to mainstream choices. Price has inevitably played a role: See how chicken and beef intersected as their relative costs shifted. Even marketing has had a measurable impact. Some American dietary habits never die, but in general, we're eating healthier, fresher and more food.

Americans for generations were steak-eating stalwarts. But starting in the mid-1970s, beef was less in favor, while consumption of chicken, the number-three choice after beef and pork, started to accelerate. Their lines crossed in the 1990s, and today the chicken is reaching new heights. So what’s all the clucking about? By the mid-1970s, worries about health risks associated with red meat were entering the public consciousness, with government guidelines suggesting Americans watch their consumption. Meanwhile, chicken production was industrialized. An average broiler hen took 56 days to grow to a market weight of 3.62 pounds in 1970; in 2015, it took 48 days to reach 6.24 pounds, according to the National Chicken Council. That drove down its cost relative to beef, and consumers took notice.

With Starbucks seemingly everywhere, it may be a surprise that coffee-drinking has never recovered from a quarter-century of decline that started with the 1970 peak and bottomed out in 1995. Industry data show that drinking peaked in the 1960s, said Ric Rhinehart, executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association based in Santa Ana, California. Inflationary pressures pushed brewers to lower their quality of blends throughout the 1960s and 1970s, with the bottom dropping out in 1977, when frost in Brazil, the world’s biggest producer, pushed prices up, quality down and consumers away from coffee. The rise of coffeehouses has somewhat brought coffee back, but “Mad Men”-era coffee drinking never returned for two reasons, he said. First, more expensive espresso-based coffee is meant to be drunk one cup at a time, unlike pots of drip coffee. And coffee consumed outside the home doesn’t get dumped down the drain at the end of the day. “In the old days, the kitchen sink was one of the biggest consumers of coffee,” he said. Coffee sales still miss that key consumer.

Raisins were just another snack food, one whose consumption was affected by such things as frosts in California, until the mid-1980s. That was when the farmer-funded California Raisin Advisory Board hit marketing gold with the California Raisins, a fictional, Claymation-animated rhythm-and-blues group whose popular commercials had consumers suddenly feeling an urge to eat dried grapes. Consumption peaked in 1988, the same year that “Meet the Raisins!” aired on CBS. But like many blues masters, they had a messy decline. Pop culture moved on, and the board closed over disputes with the raisin growers who funded them over production costs that wildly outpaced the budget. Despite occasional cameos, the raisins never regained their marketing mojo, with demand now at 1.4 pounds per person.

Pineapple, once synonymous with your uncle’s trip to Hawaii and a staple of Christmas fruitcakes, has become everyday fresh produce, as Americans learned to cut the spiny fruit and eschew the perfectly round cuttings sold in cans. In fact, the amount of fresh pineapple eaten today is almost exactly the same amount of canned pineapple eaten in 1970. Credit goes to more sophisticated supply chains—your fresh pineapple probably comes from Costa Rica now—and different ways of packaging fresh foods, such as the plastic fruit cups you see in the grocery store. Pineapples also are literally sweeter than they were a generation ago, starting with the introduction of the Del Monte Gold Extra Sweet variety in 1997. That’s spurred additional sales

Pineapple’s story is repeated across fresh, frozen and canned foods, with canned foods declining and frozen-foods consumption bumping along as fresh-produce grocery aisles grow bigger and more diverse. Spinach, for example, shows not only the move from canned to fresh, but the danger of food-safety problems: Consumption has never rebounded from an e.coli scare that killed at least three people in 2006. The effect has been an overall increase in food consumption, period—a concern at a time when obesity is a major public health issue. Too much of a good thing? Not when you look at the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, which say fruit and vegetables, whether canned, fresh or frozen, are still underrepresented in the American diet.

In keeping with globalized food chains and increased freshness, some of the biggest changes in consumption came in such products as mangoes, limes and avocados, while canned goods saw the biggest drops. High-fructose corn syrup, a cheap sugar alternative, skyrocketed through the 1990s, then lost favor as sugar growers became more competitive and consumers worried about over-consumption.

But some standbys have weathered the years. Peanut butter remains popular, despite a rise in allergies. Butter and flour are household mainstays, and people still like ice cream for dessert. If time travelers from 1970 walked into a U.S. supermarket, they'd find the variety of products and packaging eye-opening, but their grocery list could still be filled. They might just wonder why there’s a coffee shop inside, how their chickens got so huge and why their favorite canned foods now appear to be preserved in clear plastic containers.