Comment by natejenkins | Hacker News Reader

Comment by natejenkins | Hacker News Reader

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Something is off in these numbers. There are 9000 calories in a kilogram of fat. If Americans were really eating 1700 calories more than required each day they would be gaining around 1.3kg/week (about 3 pounds). Of course, given the same amount of physical activity, the heavier you are the more calories are required to maintain your current weight, so that eventually this 1.3kg/week would level off.

From personal experience, I would say the average weight gain per year in the US is a few kilograms, let's say 2. This is 18000 calories in excess, which is just about 50 calories a day, or basically one apple too many. The clear lesson to be learned is to cut back on the apples.

There are some studies that agree with my anecdotal evidence: http://www.livestrong.com/article/142567-average-increase-we...

Well the numbers are from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and I can't think what reason they'd have to produce flawed statistics, but then again I can't find the original study methodology so there's no way to be sure.

I think the table on the Wikipedia page is misleading. The first paragraph states:

"Food consumption refers to the amount of food available for human consumption as estimated by the FAO Food Balance Sheets. However the actual food consumption may be lower than the quantity shown as food availability depending on the magnitude of wastage and losses of food in the household, e.g. during storage, in preparation and cooking, as plate-waste or quantities fed to domestic animals and pets, thrown or given away."

This is the amount of food available for consumption per person, not the amount consumed. Waste at the grocery store, waste at home, and uneaten food left on the plate are not taken into account, and I would guess that all three are important factors.

The per-capita value is also going to be inherently skewed above the recommended level due to that there's more room for eating over the recommended level than eating below it. It's much easier to be stable at 3000 calories per day (due to either being already overweight or exercising a lot) than at 1000 calories per day.

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