We Tried the AVERAGE AMERICAN DIET, Here's What Happened

the average american diet it's big it's cheap and it's everywhere and although the prevalence of various healthy diets and exercise routines have exploded in recent years so has the massive selection of sugar-filled processed foods widening an extreme gap of choices all across the board today two buff dudes will revisit their childhood diet so you don't have to wish them luck the average american diet what is the average american diet that's an excellent question the united states is a big place so depending on where you're raised you can mean different things to different people whether you're from miami new york the midwest or los angeles but overall here are the foods you're gonna find at any grocery store within the country and we're gonna be trying them out for better or for worse science daily on the american diet highly processed foods make up more than 60 percent of the calories in food we buy i'm just gonna guess that has a lot of sugar nothing more american than sour patch kid cereal this is the most american cereal i've ever seen in my life the first ingredient is sugar i myself have done it many times i know i could do it again i could eat this thing in one sitting that would be 1400 calories and 130 grams of sugar that's just on breakfast that's not even including the milk that you're gonna have to go along with it so that's a lot of calories to start your day most of this is geared towards kids very kid friendly and i don't think that's really a good way to teach kids or start out their nutritional journey a lot of times as a kid you're not buying the cereal for what it is you're buying it for what character is endorsing it so hey this is frozen two cereal i don't care if it's 150 grams of sugar i want it because the non-elsa brown hair girls on it so a lot of times it's all about convenience and it doesn't really get more convenient than pop tarts you can have them in just a few moments and they're not exactly the most nutritional food out there again if you're just going by taste they taste pretty damn good so we're gonna grab some of those a lot of things in america the bigger the better as you can see this is 50 larger and these ingredients that list is about as long as a phone book that's gonna take a while to read exactly what is in this thing thankfully it doesn't take nearly as long to microwave and you're gonna be having a hell of a lot of calories in the process wow look at that on clearance jeep 87 cents it only takes two minutes to make again a very long list of ingredients it's usually something we would have went for at a younger age just because it's so easy and it's so cheap too okay this is bringing back huge memories i did construction in my early 20s and it was all about convenience you wake up at 6 00 a.m you don't got a lot of time so i would grab one of these of course i would see that it said protein so i thought well it's protein it's got to be good right uh neglecting the fact that it had 45 grams of carbs and a big chunk of that is sugar it's 38 grams of sugar just in this little tiny thing right here sometimes i would have two a day and it all adds up so i'm gonna grab one of these things and let the nostalgia flow through me and the overabundance of sugars and it is funny to look back on it how many calories just one of these have 290 calories per bottle i mean usually you'd have like a six pack of it or get a two liter and you would drink just this stuff all day and you just have an amazing amount of calories but also pretty much it's just pure sugar this thing has 77 grams of sugar i feel like we took it pretty light too we didn't really go crazy i mean there was pastries there's candy there's a lot of different variety a lot a variety of things to buy i mean you go to any grocery store now and it is surprising how much stuff you can buy it is and thankfully now more than ever they have a lot of healthy options as well but sometimes they're more expensive so naturally you gravitate towards more cheaper items which is what we did today the u.s department of agriculture on the american diet the average american eats or drinks more than 100 pounds of sugar a year [Music] just got done with breakfast it started getting me thinking about something and that is a lot of times when you eat something it's gonna be out of sight out of mind you have it but you don't really know what's in it i mean yes there's nutritional facts there's ingredients but you know it's hard to make a connection on how much you're actually having so what i did is i weighed out some sugar and i did three different sizes of popular soda brand we're gonna see how much sugar is actually in these uh these different sizes here so the first size it's going to contain 77 grams of sugar and as you can see that is quite a bit the next size up is the one liter and measured out and it is 130 grams of sugar right here and then we got the 2 liter which is 276 grams of sugar and that almost filled glass to the top and that's pretty insane you think about it because i know myself i can easily finish a two liter of soda in a day i did when i was a kid and just looking at this now i gotta say wow i don't think anyone in the right mind would dump this much sugar and just have it throughout the day knowingly and of course this is going to be on top of everything out you know like you have a big box of cereal you have pop tarts you have anything donuts they're all just packed full of sugar and i think that's one thing about the american diet that i have to say is seems pretty dangerous and uh once you put it in perspective i think it's pretty enlightening as well the national center for health statistics on the american diet one in three adults consume fast food on a given day now this wouldn't be an average american diet without going to some fast food so we're going to be picking a popular fast food chain and ordering the average size american portion which also happens to be a buff dude size portion so it works out pretty good hi i can help you when you're ready yeah so we will get four double decker tacos and six crunchy tacos regular or supreme i'll get it um i'll get it supreme please for me taco bell brings back a lot of memories when i was younger i would work nights i would get off about three in the morning and on my way home the last thing i felt like doing was cooking a big meal so i'd run by taco bell i'd grab four double decker tacos and to kind of feel a little better about myself i'd always get a large diet drink having all of that right before bed not a good combination no for my stomach or the toilet the next day [Music] health.gov on the american diet most americans exceed the recommendations for added sugars saturated fats and sodium now it's time for some snacks you'll see the sugar content is extremely high on both of these i mean when mean hudson were growing up of course we had a lot of these kind of snacks and we would usually sit down and play video games for hours and in the meantime we'd be downing soda like it's nobody's business both of us are pretty fast drinkers and when you kind of start doing the math when you think about each 12 ounce can of soda has over 50 grams of sugar well it adds up pretty damn quick and that's hundreds of grams of sugar each day and that's not even counting the caffeine in each can of soda so it's basically like crack for a kid and of course the more you have the more you crave because sugar is very addictive it's a fresh reminder of the effects you get that sugar high and immediately after you have one you want another one but i'm going to try to to hold back a little bit because i feel like now that i'm a little bit older i probably couldn't handle it i might even throw up so it's a little bit it's a stark reminder of the difference about being a kid and an adult but i think it just goes to show you that kids need to be aware of this too because in the long run it is very unhealthy the ific foundation on the american diet more than one in three u.s consumers are following a specific diet or eating pattern and they are increasingly averse to carbohydrates and sugar a big problem for me growing up was using a lot of this food as a comfort of course it's really good it's not that satiating so you can continue to eat it and i would lean on it from time to time as a crutch of course then you get used to your favorite meals maybe your favorite fast food and that's a crazy thing because any town you go in throughout the country and even now parts of the world it's very comforting to see that sign because of familiarity if you're seeing maybe like joe's diner you don't really know what that food's going to taste like but whereas if you see a popular fast food chain you know what's on the menu you know what it's going to taste like and you just go to it time and time again and that can be at least for me a bad thing because i had a lot of sugar in my diet i struggled with my weight and when i began to do things like moderate my sugar finally taking a look at what i was eating that really helped me out a lot so i can still have it from time to time but now i'm just a little bit more educated onto what i'm putting into my body health.gov on the american diet only 20 of adults meet the physical activity guidelines for aerobic and muscle strengthening activity [Music] i have to admit i'm very happy we are working out i couldn't imagine eating like this and just sitting on the couch it's how we deal with our guilt that is true the church of iron they're not lying big mistake i made growing up especially when my diet wasn't quite in order was that i thought i could outrun it by working out really hard and it turns out it didn't really work out the way that i wished it would and the craziest thing is is once i got my eating in order i noticed huge gains in not only my physique but also in my strength levels and just generally how i was feeling i was less fatigued i had more energy in the gym and it helped me to become the buff dude that i am today so we just finished the workout an hour long and we probably only burned around 500 calories that seems like a lot until you take into account that it only took us about two minutes to eat 500 calories and it's taken us 60 minutes to burn that off so it's really easy to consume a lot especially in the form of like liquid calories with some sugary coffee drinks i mean breakfast i had 1400 calories in cereal jesus christ you're a madman i [Music] know cdc.gov on the american diet from 1999 to 2000 through 2017 to 2018 the prevalence of obesity increased from 30.5 to 42.4 percent and the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7 to 9.2 percent so when hudson and i were growing up our parents both had jobs and we'd have corn dogs we'd have frozen pizza and it is very cheap and it's very easy to make you pretty much just stick in the oven or the microwave and you're good to go tastes good it's easy again it's cheap and it's just that's one of those things that i feel like is kind of the ongoing theme of this video is cheap easy and convenient it's just one thing that once you kind of get out of eating like that you start eating like that again and it it doesn't taste as good as i remember being a kid i actually have to wear depends right now because i'm actually as we speak that's how bad it's become and i don't know if that's because i'm older or because the food so that wraps up the average american diet and i have to say it was pretty interesting experiment of sugar caffeine fat and god knows what else but the great thing is there's also a lot of healthy choices that continue to grow in the market which is awesome you've got some alternatives to sugar you have of course a lot of different diet movements like paleo and vegan so that's great but i think one thing especially with america it can be a country of extremes so you have the extremely healthy people and you have the extremely unhealthy people and i think the older we get the more that we value moderation try to stick with single ingredients that's going to be the most healthiest and the easiest way to go about any kind of eating and you always know what you're putting in your body for the most part it's going to be a lot easier to control your calories and your macros that way you're kind of able to enjoy both worlds but you never stray too far to either one so yeah i have to say i won't be returning to the average american diet anytime soon [Music] so [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Buff Dudes

Views: 1,004,409

Rating: 4.9394245 out of 5

Keywords: diet, food, american, america, paleo, vegan, keto, carnivore, junk food, fast food, sugar, eating, challenge, buff dudes, foods

Id: H9MPv2rH_Og

Length: 14min 3sec (843 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 24 2020