It's now ''28 pounds per person per year. Nearly six in 10 consumers say overall fat content is a concern, but only three in 10 are eating less fats and oils and less red meat,'' said Anne Sydnor, director of consumer affairs for the Food Marketing Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based trade association for the supermarket industry. Several kinds of sodas and infant formula filled the top eight spots of UPC-scanned products at supermarket checkouts and Doritos Nacho Cheese Corn Tortilla Chips, Oreo Flavored Chocolate Vanilla Cream, Hellmann's Mayonnaise, Maxwell House Ground Coffee and Campbells Tomato Condensed Soup were the only ''foods'' in the top 15 products, in a study of Central and Eastern Pennsylvanians' buying patterns that was published in Food World, a supermarket trade publication. The return to comfort foods shows how closely food is linked to our emotional health. She and other dietitians emphasized there is nothing wrong with comfort foods and no such things as ''good foods'' and ''bad foods,'' if consumers practice moderation and balance in their diets.
Salads are increasingly popular.
Ordering assorted ''small plates'' of foods to taste is now a popular option to ordering a full, multi-course dinner. Dausch also reported, however, the number of restaurant customers ordering foods with nutrition in mind has dropped in the nineties. They've gotten the message about the healthfulness of low-fat diets. Despite all of the health messages released in the last decade, Americans and their children are becoming fatter and fatter, observed Cindy Moore, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association and director of nutrition at the Cleveland Clinic. The major problem is marketing.