Most U.S adults are passing on eating healthy fruits & vegetables

A new study shows that less than 15% of the US adult population eats fruits daily as per federal

recommendations. The numbers are far worse in certain states like Tennessee where it is just 7.5%.

There are even fewer adults that eat vegetables as per recommendations.

Lead author for this study, Latetia V. Moore said that fruit & vegetable consumption has been low for multiple years now and it’s only recently that a way of measuring this has been developed.

She also said that it was quite surprising how low the figures were in southern states around the US.

Moore, along with co-authors analyzed a recent Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey in the District of Columbia and the fifty states with the help of a new procedure for scoring to help compare state-reported numbers that are expressed usually as frequency of intake and counted usually in cups per day.

In the year 2013, half of the respondents ate fruit fewer than once every day & vegetables fewer than 1.7 times a day.

Researchers compared these responses with Dietary Guidelines which said that adults that perform around 30 mins of moderate physical activity every day need at least 1.5 - 2 cups of fruit as well as 2-3 cups of vegetables every day. Some of the more active adults may even be able to eat more without increasing their calorie intake too much.

Only 13% of the people in the US reported fruit consumption while 8.9% reported vegetable consumption as per these recommendations.

Fruit consumption was at 7% in Tennessee, the lowest while California was the highest at 17.7% which met the recommendation.

As far as vegetable recommendations are concerned the proportions ranged from 5.5% in Mississippi to 13% in California.

These results are limited since they are dependent on self-reported food consumption which isn’t always accurate. It is also not know whether the numbers represent increases or decreases in fruit & vegetable consumption from periods before 2010.