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Fast food consumption among adults in the United States, 2013–2016

Pick a day at random, and you can bet that nearly 40% of Americans will eat fast food during those 24 hours, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Between 2013 and 2016, 36.6% of American adults said they ate fast food in the past 24 hours, according to interviews conducted through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Anything participants categorized as “restaurant fast food/pizza” was included in the total. (Fast food tends to be high in calories, fat and sodium without offering much nutritional value.)