Are we fooling ourselves?

90 percent of Americans say their diet is healthy, CR poll finds

Everybody talks about having a healthy diet, but when it comes to following through, the evidence isn't so clear-cut.

In November 2010 the Consumer Reports National Research Center surveyed a national sample of 1,234 U.S. adults about their eating habits and how they maintained a healthy diet.

We found that Americans are making an effort to practice good nutrition and weight control, with 90 percent describing their diet as "somewhat," "very," or "extremely" healthy. But they have a tendency to give themselves more credit than they perhaps deserve. They drink more sweetened beverages than they should, for example, and sometimes undercut their own efforts at weight control by not limiting their intake of sweets and fats.

Also, they like Cheerios a lot, but parsnips, not so much.

Based on the heights and weights they gave us, about 35 percent were at an appropriate weight, 36 percent were overweight, and 21 percent officially qualified as obese, with a body mass index of 30 or more.

But not everyone was realistic about where they fell on the weight spectrum. Overall, 50 percent said they were overweight or obese, compared with about six in 10 who actually were. About one in three people who said they were at a healthy weight actually had BMIs in the overweight range. And less than 1 in 10 made an error in the other direction—they said they were overweight or obese when their BMIs suggested they were not.

Trying to eat right

Regardless of their weight, we found most people are trying to eat right. Fifty-nine percent said they were either "careful" or "strict" about their food intake, while only 23 percent said they pretty much ate whatever they wanted.

Thirty-eight percent described their diet over the last year as "extremely" or "very" healthy and 53 percent said their diet was "somewhat" healthy. Only 11 percent owned up to a diet that was "not very" healthy or "not at all" healthy.

Here's a look at the percentage of people who said they observed the following practices all or most days of the week:

• Choosing whole grains rather than refined carbs, like brown rice over white: 60 percent.
• Consuming five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day: 58 percent.
• Limiting sweets and sugar: 53 percent.
• Limiting the consumption of fat: 51 percent.

(It should be pointed out that respondents might be overestimating their vegetable consumption in light of a recent Centers for Disease Control report that said less than one-third of Americans manage to consume even two servings of fruits and vegetables per day.)

Only a small percentage are doing what clinical studies and diet experts have found to be important for maintaining a healthy weight:  Weighing themselves most or every day (22 percent), and tracking calories (15 percent).

Breakfast and sugary drinks

Our survey focused on two habits that nutrition researchers say help people control their weight: eating breakfast and avoiding sugary drinks. Results were mixed.

Breakfast

Seventy-eight percent of the respondents said they had breakfast the day our pollsters called them. Their top breakfast menu items were fruit, 42 percent; fruit juice or juice drink, 37 percent; cold cereal, 29 percent; whole-wheat bread, toast, or muffin, 25 percent; and oatmeal, 18 percent. Eggs were also popular: 22 percent reported eating them, but more than a third of that group opted for either egg whites or an egg substitute.

Cheerios was the runaway favorite breakfast cereal, getting three times as many mentions as the runner-up, shredded wheat. (We didn't ask for specific brand names.)

Sugary drinks

Forty-three percent of the respondents said they drank at least one sugared drink a day, such as a full-sugar soft drink or sugar-sweetened coffee or tea. People who were trying for a healthy diet did better than that, but not by as much as you might expect. Of those who said they carefully watched their sugar intake, 30 percent said they had at least one sugar-sweetened beverage on a typical weekday. So did 26 percent of the self-described dieters and 34 percent of the people who rated their diets as "extremely" or "very" healthy.

Vegetables!

By now, pretty much everyone knows you're supposed to get at least your "five a day" of fruit and vegetables as part of a healthy diet. We wondered how Americans were tackling this assignment. So we gave respondents a list of 33 vegetables and asked how often they ate them, if ever.

Our average respondent identified 10 kinds of vegetables he or she typically ate once a week or more. But when we counted how many vegetables the typical American said he rarely or never reached for, that number jumped to 15.

Here's the list of the most popular vegetables, ranked by the percentage of people who said they ate them at least once a week:

And here's the wallflower list, ranked in order of the percentage of people who said they ate them rarely or never:

Overall, 66 percent of the respondents said they were satisfied with the amount of vegetables they ate. Asked why they didn't step up their vegetable intake, 30 percent said it was because they thought vegetables were hard to store or went "bad" too quickly. Fourteen percent said vegetables were too expensive. Seventeen percent said someone in their household didn't like vegetables, and 13 percent said that they didn't like them.

Are you fooling yourself about fiber and calories? Take our Healthy Eating Quiz and find out.