Title: How Much Time Do Americans Spend Eating? | USDA
Headings: How Much Time Do Americans Spend Eating?
Blog Archives Categories
Select a month and year to view Show Blogs for
Archive
How Much Time Do Americans Spend Eating?
Write a Response
Comments
morella DeRosa
Abe Schreier
Mark Douglas
Abe Schreier
Karen Hamrick
Karen Hamrick
Karen Hamrick

Content: 2010 did, however, show a small increase (1 minute) of average time spent in primary eating/drinking, which may or may not be meaningful—when the 2011 data are available we will see if that increase is a real change in behavior. The data do show an increase in time spent in food preparation and cleanup, from an average of 31.2 minutes over 2003-08, to 32.4 minutes in 2009, and 33.6 minutes in 2010. So while time spent in eating/drinking is essentially unchanged, food preparation time has increased possibly indicating that Americans are preparing more meals at home. More statistics using the 2003-10 American Time Use Survey data are here: http://stats.bls.gov/tus/#tables To answer your question on healthy vs unhealthy food choices and price vs quality/quantity, USDA-ERS has ongoing research on these topics. One example is Geographic Differences in the Relative Price of Healthy Foods, http://ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB78/
Karen Hamrick
Dec 02, 2011
@Abe Schreier—Thanks for your questions. No, we do not have estimates of how much time an average person spends eating/drinking over a lifetime. Individuals may change their eating patterns as they age, and also Americans patterns of eating and food preparation has changed over time as well. So, with our data for 2006-08 we did not estimate time spent eating/drinking over an individual’s lifetime. However, the topic of changing eating patterns over one’s lifetime is an interesting one.