Report shows US adults eat a lot of fast food

If you’re an adult in America, there’s a better than 1 in 3 chance that you’ll eat fast food today — if you haven’t already.

New survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 36.6 percent of us eat some kind of fast food on any given day. That includes 37.9 percent of men and 35.4 percent of women, according to a report published Wednesday by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Fast food is on the menu all day long. On a typical day, 22.7 percent of Americans get their breakfast from a fast-food outlet. At lunchtime, 43.7 percent of Americans pick up a quick meal, and 42 percent do the same for dinner. Another 22.8 percent get a snack from a fast-food joint.

Nearly half of American men — 48.3 percent — eat fast food for lunch on any given day. That’s significantly more than the 39.1 percent of women who do the same.

On the other hand, 1 in 4 women (25.7 percent) treat themselves to a fast-food snack on a typical day, compared with 1 in 5 men (19.5 percent).

The conventional wisdom about fast food is that people eat it when they can’t afford something better because of a lack of money or a lack of time. But the report reveals that isn’t necessarily the case.

In fact, the more money someone has, the more likely he or she is to partake of fast food on any given day.

Among those whose family income was less than or equal to 130 percent of the federal poverty line (which was set at $11,770 for a single person or $24,250 for a family of four in 2016), 31.7 percent ate fast food on a typical day. Among middle-income families (whose income was between 130 percent and 350 percent of the poverty line), 36.4 percent ate fast food on a typical day. And among high-income families (those with incomes above 350 percent of the poverty line), 42 percent dined on fast food on a typical day.

This might make you wonder whether “fast food” included take- out sushi, Starbucks frappuccinos and organic berries from the farmers market. The definition used in the survey was vague: “restaurant fast food/ pizza.” It’s possible that some people interpreted this to mean something other than burgers, fried chicken and subs.