An interesting questions was asked on Arima — For those that exercise, how often do they eat junk food. Over the past few weeks, we’ve collected over 900 responses. There are some fascinating results and I thought it would be a good idea to share those. If you don’t like reading and just want to see the important points, just scroll down, look at the pretty doughnut charts, and read the TL;DR section.
Let’s start with the question, which you can find it (and should cast your vote as well) here. There choices were More than once a week, Once a week, Once every few weeks, Once a month and I rarely eat junk food.
Here is what the global results looks like.
As you can see, more than 75% of the respondents say that they eat junk food at least once a week. There is a fair amount of truth to the result as most of my friends who exercise also visit fast food restaurants often. If you consider junk food in the broad sense (fast food, truck food, cafeteria, etc), I wouldn’t be surprised that this number is even higher.
What’s really interesting was how the percentages vary by country, because this is something you would not normally find from other poll results. Of the 30+ countries that voted, we will look at three places in particular — USA, Germany, and Sweden. It may seem strange why these three are picked, but when you look at the results, you will see why the selection makes perfect sense.
USA, the birthplace of fast food, has a disproportionally high number of junk food eaters (almost 85%!).
Canada is geographically and culturally similar to their southern neighbour, and it is indeed not a surprise that their stats look similar (To avoid repetiton, I won’t post another graph here, but definitely look at the Canadian stats on the Arima site).
When we move over to Europe, however, we see a big change. Germany, the first example I picked, only has just over 50% frequent fast food consumers. If you head north to Sweden, this number drops to 35%. I will include the Sweden chart as a proof of what I said (and a big congrats to them for living a health lifestyle).
So what does this tell us? Well, I am not an expert on this, but I am guessing it’s all about the culture of food. My neighbour is Italian and he tells me that in Italy, the cappuccino or caffè latte is something you drink in the morning, for breakfast. At other times of the day you’re supposed to drink black espresso, and only after meals. If you order a caffè latte in the middle of the day in Italy, people will automatically know that you’re not Italian. They will also secretly and sometimes not so secretly laugh at you. They look at meals in a much more serious way than North Americans do. For me, breakfast really could mean anything — McDonald’s coffee, Starbucks coffee, or coffee machine coffee (often followed by a quick bagel or sandwich) — anything that can feed me is good enough because I need to get to work quickly. Europeans also tend to eat slowing and enjoy long lunches or dinners in company of family (the so-called Slow Food Movement), which is probably the reason why fast food has a smaller market there. Honestly, I think these stats that we are seeing apply to everyone, not just those who exercise.
So, for those who didn’t read the whole passage, here is the TL;DR section.
- People who exercise don’t really control their diet, as least this is not visible from our data.
- The % of US bodybuilders who eat junk food at least once a week is 85%, much, much higher than their European counterparts.
- But, there are probably some cultural reasons behind why Americans consumer more junk food. This results probably applies everyone, not just those who exercise.
Arima is a Q&A website for mass opinion. Ask questions, get answers from users all around the world, and see them visualized and compared with the rest of the planet.
