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U.S. Children, Adolescents Are Eating More Fast Food, CDC Says | Healthiest Communities

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More than a third of U.S. children and adolescents consumed fast food on a given day during a recent four-year period – and the share of calories they’re consuming has been rising, according to a new federal report.

The report released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, found that 36.3% of children and adolescents aged 2 to 19 consumed fast food on any given day between 2015 and 2018.

Within that share, 13.8% of children and adolescents consumed between 25% and 45% of their daily calories from fast food, while 11.4% got more than 45% of their daily calories from it. The CDC notes in its report that fast food is “associated with higher caloric intake and poorer diet quality in children and adolescents.”

Photos: Feeding America

NEW YORK, April 24, 2020: People pick up food at a food bank distribution site in the Brooklyn borough of New York, the United States, on April 24, 2020. More than 50,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States while debates are heightening over reopening the country's economy severely battered by the virus. A total of 870,468 cases have been reported in the United States with the death toll reaching 50,031 as of 11 a.m. Friday ,1500 GMT, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering ,CSSE, at Johns Hopkins University. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua via Getty) (Xinhua/ via Getty Images)

The report also shows that fast-food consumption has fluctuated over the years. The average percentage of fast-food calories consumed by children and adolescents on a given day fell from 14.1% in 2003-2004 to 10.6% in 2009-2010, before it started to generally increase and land at 14.4% in 2017-2018. Adolescents aged 12 to 19 saw a notably large one-year jump in calories from fast food in recent years, the report shows: from 15.3% in 2015-2016 to 18% in 2017-2018.

There were disparities among different demographics, according to the CDC.

“Adolescents aged 12-19 consumed a higher average percentage of daily calories from fast food than did younger children, overall and across all demographics,” the report reads, while also noting that the average percentage of fast-food calories consumed by adolescents was 16.7% between 2015 and 2018, compared with 11.4% for children aged 2 to 11.

Hispanic and Black adolescents were consuming disproportionately more fast-food calories than white adolescents, the report found. The mean percentage of calories from fast food on any given day within the four-year range was 21.5% for non-Hispanic Black adolescents and 18.5% for Hispanic adolescents. The rate for non-Hispanic white adolescents was 14.8%, according to the CDC.

The differences by race or ethnicity weren’t significant for children aged 2 to 11, but non-Hispanic Black children and adolescents had the highest rate of fast-food calorie consumption – 16.9% – overall across ages 2 to 19.

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