It's no secret that we're eating more than ever. For example, an average American family of four devours roughly 6,000 pounds of food a year. But did you know that we spend substantially less of our disposable income on food that any other country? (This is because of agricultural system advances, such as biotechnology, which allow for great production volumes and lower costs.) Here are some other "juicy" details:

Hearty Breakfast

Breakfast is the meal we most often eat at home. According to NPD Foodworld's 2002 Breakfast in America report, 77% of all breakfasts are consumed at home, in contrast to 49% of lunches and 75% of dinners. At-home, 1950s-style breakfasts have made a comeback, leading to record consumption of eggs, sausage and bacon.

In 2002, each American enjoyed about 33 breakfast meals composed of all types of egg/omelet dishes, up from 27 in 1998. On average, we skipped 50 breakfast meals in 2002, close to the high of 51 in 1998. Consumers who are 18-34 years old neglected to eat breakfast the most—nearly one out of every four, double the national average.

Lunch Meats

We eat roughly 2.19 billion Oscar Mayer Bologna sandwiches a year. That's over 6 million sandwiches a day or 69 sandwiches a second.

And speaking of meat, each American ate about 211.1 pounds of meat—including red meat, poultry and fish—in 2001, says the American Meat Institute. A little over half of that were red meat products—beef, veal, lamb, mutton and pork. Poultry accounted for about 41.7% while fish only made up 6.7% of total meat consumption.

According to the American Meat Institute, in 2001 the average American spent $229.53 on beef, $136.45 on pork, $121.28 on chicken and only $19.38 on turkey.

What's for Dinner?

Many of our dinners start out frozen, as the frozen dinner and entrée category continues to lead the frozen food market with over $5.9 billion in annual supermarket sales. The entire frozen food market is booming, with total retail sales in the U.S. exceeding $26.6 billion in 2001, up 6.1% from the previous year. Here, too, our love for meat is apparent, as the frozen meat/seafood and the frozen novelties categories made the most substantial gains.

In fact, the frozen meal category has been growing steadily for the past decade, says the NPD Group, Inc. The average American consumed a frozen meal option about 6 times a month, or 74 times from March 2001 to Feb. 2002. And frozen foods figure prominently on our grocery lists. On a typical trip to the supermarket, 30% of shoppers always buy frozen food while 94% sometimes buy frozen food, revealed a recent poll by Tupperware Corp.

Pasta is a popular dinner choice, too. In fact, the average consumer eats pasta for dinner over 40 times a year or roughly once a week, says the NPD Group. It's most popular among kids, who consume about 62 pounds of pasta a year, beating all other age groups in pasta eating. What's the favorite type of pasta? Spaghetti. According to the American Pasta Report, 40% of respondents named spaghetti as their top pick while second placer, lasagna, only garnered 12% of the votes.

Desserts & Sweets

Chocolate emerged as the most preferred flavor for desserts and sweet snacks in the latest poll sponsored by the Chocolate Manufacturers Association. In the survey, 52% of respondents named chocolate as their favorite. Second place was a tie between vanilla and strawberry/other berry flavors, which snagged 12% of the votes. Cherry claimed third place, named as the favorite by 3% of respondents.

Not surprisingly, the poll revealed that more women than men favored chocolate. While 57% of women indicated that chocolate was their top flavor, only 46% of men cast their votes for chocolate. Milk chocolate won big over dark chocolate, with 65% preferring milk chocolate and 27% favoring dark chocolate.

When it comes to ice cream, however, vanilla reigns, claiming anywhere from 20-29% of sales. Landing in second place, chocolate ice cream is far less popular, accounting for about 9-10% of the market. Americans eat the most ice cream in the world per capita, followed by Australians. The average American consumes about 24 quarts of ice cream a year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Each American gobbled up about 24 pounds of candy in 2001, says the U.S. Census Bureau. Sounds like a ton? Candy eating has actually been slumping for the past few years. Four years ago, the per capita candy consumption by Americans exceeded 27 pounds a year.

Drink Up

Bottled water has become increasingly popular and is now a $7.7-billion-per-year industry. According to Beverage Marketing, in 1991, the average American purchased 9.3 gallons of bottled water (excluding tap water), a figure that more than doubled over the next 10 years. Now, the per capita consumption of bottled water is 19.5 gallons. That's not too far below the consumption level of a perennial favorite—milk. Each American downs about 25 gallons of milk a year.

Aside from bottled water, other "hot" beverages include vitamin waters, sports drinks and energy drinks, which all belong to one of the fastest growing categories in the food industry—functional beverages. For example, sales of enhanced water quadrupled from 2000 to 2001, from $20 million to $85 million.

Although sales of carbonated drinks are declining, they are still extremely popular. A carbonated soft drink accounts for one out of every four beverages consumed in the country today, according to the National Soft Drink Association. That translated to a per capita consumption of just under 53 gallons in 2001. In fact, retail sales of soft drinks topped $61 billion in 2001.

Sources: Facts for Features: Valentine's Day
U.S. Census Bureau, Jan. 31, 2003
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2003/cb03ff02.html

About Soft Drinks
National Soft Drink Association
http://www.nsda.org/SoftDrinks/index.html

Food Fun and Facts
http://www.foodfunandfacts.com/foodtrivia.htm

Bet Your Bacon on Breakfast
A. Elizabeth Sloan
Food Technology, Jan. 2003
http://www.ift.org/publications/docshop/ft_shop/ftindex.shtml

Overview of U.S. Meat and Poultry Production and Consumption
American Meat Institute
http://www.meatami.com/

Frozen Food Trends
American Frozen Food Institute
http://www.affi.com/factstat-trends.asp

Big Ideas 2003: Darius Bikoff vs. Coke and Pepsi
Christine Y. Chen
Fortune, Jan. 21, 2003
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/print/0,15935,409274,00.html?

Formulating Function into Beverages
Cindy Hazen
Food Product Design, Jan. 2003
http://www.foodproductdesign.com/

Fun Facts About Food
http://www.geocities.com/snowyssillyfacts/food1.html

Thirteen Fun Facts about Ice Cream
Susan E. Davis
Dr. Spock
http://www.drspock.com/article/0,1510,5941,00.html

Instant Background Report for Ice Cream
Radio Advertising Bureau
http://www.rab.com/membership/samples/icecream.pdf

America Votes for Chocolate
World Cocoa Foundation
http://www.chocolateandcocoa.org/News/americavotes.htm

Facts About Pasta for the Press
National Pasta Association
http://www.ilovepasta.org/factsaboutpasta.html

FASS Facts on Biotech Crops—Impact on Meat, Milk and Eggs
Federation of Animal Science Societies
http://www.fass.org