Changes in diet by race/ethnicity

Data from the USDA

Oct 08, 2024

A few weeks ago I posted Changes in Diet by Income (9/17/2024) using recently updated data (8/21/2024) from the USDA Food Consumption, Nutrient Intakes, and Diet Quality report. The USDA has been sampling food intake since 1977, and the most recent update now includes 2017, which is a rather large lag in data reporting. In this post I’m going back to Table 4—Nutrient density by food source, U.S. consumers aged 2 and above, 1977–2018, and specifically the results race and ethnicity. The big takeaway here is that overall we are all more the same than different when it comes to eating. There are a few differences here and there, which I conjecture are due to some combination of culture and geography, but we all follow the same up-and-down trends over time, which I attribute to larger national influences. Please leave comments on what I missed.

Calories

As I noted by income, calorie consumption increased from 1989 to 2003, and we see the same effect by race and ethnicity. From 1989 to 1994, the slopes of the lines are almost the same for all groups. Going to 2003, Hispanics break the trend with a larger jump than the others, but then settle back down.

The other group (likely largely Asian) break the overall pattern a bit, dropping lower than everyone else by far in 2007. Yet, in 2017, calorie consumption by race and ethnicity is almost the same for all groups; in fact, we are closer together than we were in 1977.

Of course we are all eating more than we were in 1977, which mostly explains higher obesity rates. That, and our lifestyles also tend to be more sedentary.

The USDA separates the food intake into food at home and food away from home. Food at home hasn’t changed much, and the increase in calories is mostly from food away from home, and that increased from 1977 through 2003, and again the trends are the same for all groups. It is almost as if we all live in the same country.

Protein

The amount of protein in the food we eat, note the y-axis is grams per 1,000 calories, decreased from 1977 to 2003. All groups decreased at about the same rate, with the exception of the Hispanic population, which decreased a little faster, yet they made that ground up and ended tied with Other as they were in 1977. The interesting change here is that the Black population, although tied with Other and Hispanic in 1977, is now well below in protein consumption.

Again, I want to emphasize that the overall patters for all groups are largely the same.

Sodium

By income, I said, “This one surprised me a bit. I figured that as we eat more junk food, the sodium consent, milligrams per 1,000 calories, would have increased, but it decreased from 1989 through 2003.” We see the same thing by race and ethnicity, except the Other population breaks the trend in 1994 but again falls back with the other groups by 2017.

We do have a spike upward by the Hispanic population at the end, and I wonder how much of this is just noise in the data or a real change in eating habits. Other than that one deviation, all groups ended closer to each other than they started in 1977.

As to the large jump in the Other group sodium intake we see that their sodium intake away from home jumped before the other groups. It would be interesting to know what might be driving this difference and has that group consuming more sodium when eating out than the other groups.

Fat

Total fat consumption, grams per 1,000 calories, drops from 1997 to 1994 for all groups, just like it did by income, and then goes back up starting around 2009, just like it did by income. I have to figure this is the result of healthy eating advertising and fads in eating, as all groups exhibit the same pattern because we all live in the same country.

When we look at fat consumption eating and home and away, the patterns are very similar, and food we consume away from home is higher in fat, which isn’t a surprise. Despite the media’s attention on race differences, notice how when eating out the Black and White population has been identical since 2007. If we look for it and focus on it, we can find more in common than we realize.

Iron

Iron, an important nutrient, consumption in milligrams per 1,000 calories has been dropping for the last decade. Here we see all groups starting about the same in 1977 but diverging by 2017. The USDA provides standard errors and we can make confidences intervals for the population mean iron intake. They 95% confidence intervals are: Black (6.27, 6.77), White (6.71, 6.95), Other (6.72, 7.04), and Hispanic (6.96, 7.50). The point here is that we have some statistical differences, that may or may not be meaningful. At 95% the Black, White and Other intervals overlap but it is close and if we lowered the confidence a little the intervals would separate. Hispanics are getting more iron, on average, than the White and Black populations.

I’m not a nutritionist, but this seemed like a good place to point that we do have some differences and they may matter for health. If you know more than I do then please let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Calcium

Got milk? All I can say is that must have worked given the increases in calcium on the order of 20%, in milligrams per 1,000 calories, for all groups from 1994 through 2009. I would say it has levelled off since then with some variability, except for the jump in Hispanic calcium in 2017. We’ll see if that holds up in the next update. I suppose we can only drink so much milk.

Fiber

I’m not sure how to make sense of dietary fiber, in grams per 1,000 calories. It rose from 1977 to 1994 for all groups, except Black, dropped in 2003, and then started rising again until about 2011 when the pattern is different for different groups. White and Black started to go down in 2011 and 2013, respectively. On the other hand, Hispanic and Other kept going up.

Conclusions

As I go through this, two things come to mind. It appears that fads and advertising have a big influence on us and how we eat and your race or ethnicity doesn’t matter. Would calcium consumption really have gone up without the Got Milk ads?

In general, the trends show that we are more alike by race and ethnicity than not. At the same time there are a couple of differences that make me wonder if they have specific health impacts by group. For example, Iron and Fiber.

The USDA has data by education, so I’ll have to see if that makes a difference. A future post.

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Please point out if you think something was expressed wrongly or misinterpreted. I'd rather know the truth and understand the world than be correct. I welcome comments and disagreement. We should all be forced to express our opinions and change our minds, but we should also know how to respectfully disagree and move on. Send me article ideas, feedback, or other thoughts at briefedbydata@substack.com.

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I am a tenured mathematics professor at Ithaca College (PhD Math: Stochastic Processes, MS Applied Statistics, MS Math, BS Math, BS Exercise Science), and I consider myself an accidental academic (opinions are my own). I'm a gardener, drummer, rower, runner, inline skater, 46er, and R user. I’ve written the textbooks R for College Mathematics and Statistics and Applied Calculus with R. I welcome any collaborations.