What America Eats: The Scary Stats :

What Americans are eating is... too much! This is the age in which "bigger is better." Everyone wants bigger cars, bigger houses, bigger salaries and (unfortunately) bigger food. However when it comes to your health, bigger is not necessarily better. American food portions are out of control, despite the fact that you may be eating healthy foods. Too much is too much.

The Keystone Center, an education and public policy group, found that "64 percent of all U.S. adults are overweight, including 30 percent who are obese." The problem is so prevalent that the medical expenses for obesity and those who are overweight "are estimated to have reached as high as $92.6 billion per year -- roughly 9.1 percent of total U.S. medical expenditures."

We all know a large amount of fat is not a good thing to have in your diet. But dieting is more than just cutting back on fat. Look at the bigger picture -- there needs to be more awareness of total calorie consumption in our diets.

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Nutritionist Susan Burke explains that a 35-year-old woman who does about 30-60 minutes of exercise a day should be eating around 6 ounces of grains each day (based on a 2,000 calorie diet).

"There is 1 ounce of grains in a 1/2 cup cooked pasta and 1 ounce in a slice of bread. So, between a sandwich and a cup of pasta you have already reached 4 of your 6 ounces," says Susan.

If you go to any typical Italian restaurant you will find yourself served up with about four cups of cooked pasta, which is eight ounces of grains!

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, a turkey sandwich 20 years ago had 320 calories. Today's 10-inch turkey sandwich has 820 calories. A muffin 20 years ago was 1.5 ounces and had 210 calories. Now a 5-ounce muffin has 500 calories. No wonder it's easy to gain weight!

One of the hardest parts about dieting is calorie counting , especially when the Keystone Center found that "Americans now consume one-third of their daily intake of calories outside the home." At restaurants, many times consumers are left in the dark with the nutritional content of their meal.

Susan says at restaurants "it's easy to overeat. However, there are some foods such as lettuce and green vegetables that you can have larger portions of."

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