What our survey found: A difference between what we think and what we eat<\/strong> We asked Americans about whether they consider nutritional information when they choose what to eat and, if so, what factors they prioritize (meaning: calories, sodium, etc.). Then we zoomed in on two nutritional topics that have gotten a lot of buzz lately: protein and red dyes.<\/p>\n Protein has been having a moment,\u00a0partly because it\u2019s what some experts have dubbed \u201cthe last macronutrient standing\u201d<\/a> amid the bad raps of fats and carbs. Its connection to muscle building and weight loss \u2014 especially in conjunction with GLP-1 medications like Ozempic<\/a> \u2014 has been a further boon to protein. Americans seem to have taken note. A large majority (85%) of respondents to the Yahoo News\/YouGov poll said that protein is very or somewhat important to them when choosing what to eat. Yet among the two-thirds of respondents who said they check nutritional labels,<\/a> only 13% said that protein is the factor they pay most attention to when choosing what to eat. And only about a quarter of respondents said they\u2019re eating more protein now than they were a year ago.<\/p>\n We found the same pattern when it comes to food dyes. More than two-thirds (65%) of respondents to our poll said they approve of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s<\/a> move to ban many artificial colorings<\/a>. But only 37% of respondents said they actively avoid food dyes, and just 27% said they always or usually check food labels for the ingredients (another 24% said they sometimes check).<\/p>\n If we\u2019re so aware of what we should be including or avoiding in our food, but don\u2019t necessarily act on it, are we just too lazy to make healthy choices? Not exactly. For example, 66% of the respondents to our survey make the effort to check nutritional information. But the most commonly considered factor was calorie content (16%), which isn\u2019t necessarily a good indicator of whether a food is healthy,<\/a> according to recent research. While it might seem fairly easy to check foods for their content of other nutrients, calculating out how much we need of each of these (protein, vitamins, etc.) gets complicated, fast. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of evidence that people don\u2019t take actions that are in their best interests based on their knowledge,\u201d says Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian<\/a>, director of Tufts University\u2019s Food Is Medicine Institute. \u201cPeople have an aspirational image of what they would like to do, and then [there\u2019s] what they do in real life.\u201d<\/p>\n This phenomenon is known as the intention-action gap<\/a>. \u201cAnd for nutrition, it\u2019s doubly or triply complicated by the beliefs and intentions and knowledge also being a huge source of confusion for people,\u201d says Mozaffarian.<\/p>\n Picture yourself at the grocery store or in the drive-through line. What\u2019s on your checklist? Protein? Food dyes? Calories? Whole grains? And how much is enough, or too much, and what even qualifies as a whole grain <\/a>anyway? Does a Whopper meal count as paleo? \u201cThat confusion dramatically increases the gap between aspirations and actions,\u201d says Mozaffarian.<\/p>\n It also takes time \u2014 a lot\u00a0of it. \u201cOur lives are all busy, and just because we would like to do something doesn\u2019t mean we will actually get around to doing it,\u201d Teresa Fung<\/a>, an adjunct professor of nutrition at Simmons University and Harvard University, tells Yahoo Life. And with new diet trends and hyped ingredients and priorities cropping up all the time, it can be hard to stay focused on the things that really matter for your personal diet. Fung is glad that people are aware of issues like food additives, \u201cbut hopefully it\u2019s not at the expense of other things,\u201d she says. \u201cIf it\u2019s just for a few months that I\u2019m paying attention to [any one food issue] and then a year from now I\u2019m not,\u201d that\u2019s not helpful, she adds.<\/p>\n However, some public health experts, including Mozzaffarian, believe that certain foods \u201c<\/strong>just shouldn\u2019t be on the shelf,\u201d he says. Specifically, he notes that poor quality diets and ultra-processed foods are linked to<\/a> health conditions such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome (a collection of related health problems common among overweight and obese people). \u201cIt\u2019s not an information problem, it\u2019s a product problem,\u201d Mozzaffarian says.<\/p>\n Until food is better regulated, nutrition labels are still key to making healthy choices, says Mozaffarian. Grocery shopping and cooking at home go a long way to help you take control of your health, instead of eating packaged, restaurant or fast foods.<\/p>\n And, perhaps counterintuitively, \u201cif you want to eat healthier, buy more products without labels,\u201d Mozaffarian says, meaning whole foods like fruits, vegetables and eggs.<\/p>\n When it comes to protein, most people actually don\u2019t need to stress too much about whether they\u2019re eating enough of it. \u201cThe typical American diet already has enough protein, so if people are already doing it, they don\u2019t really need to take the additional action\u201d of checking labels for protein content, she says. Fung also suspects that, like most single-nutrient eating trends, the protein obsession<\/a> will fade. \u201cIt happens all the time: There are always new discoveries, and people focus on them until they\u2019re no longer new, then we wait for the next shiny new thing,\u201d she says. That\u2019s another strategy: If the food rules you\u2019re trying to follow are super trendy, they probably aren\u2019t that sustainable, or essential, Fung adds. However, in some cases, there\u2019s a grain of truth to nutritional trends, and some exceptions are worth making. For example, perimenopausal and menopausal women<\/a> really do need to up their protein intake. And the majority of Americans don\u2019t eat enough fiber<\/a>, so the ongoing fibermaxxing<\/a> trend actually is dietitian-approved.<\/p>\n Fung and Mozaffarian acknowledge that, even if you aren\u2019t trying to keep up with the latest food fad, it takes a lot of time and energy to eat the way you aspire. \u201cIt\u2019s like another job you have to do after you come home from your job,\u201d says Fung. She says that if you can afford it, buying precut vegetables that are bagged and washed can save time and make it just a little easier to cook at home. She also advises making one or two simple changes at a time if you\u2019re trying to improve your diet.<\/p>\n \u201cPick two things you want to change, and they have to be things that are changeable within your resources and that you can change for the long haul,\u201d says Fung. \u201cHealthy dietary habits are never extreme.\u201d She adds: \u201cHealth is a long-term project.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Americans are fed a lot of information about what counts as healthy food. We wanted to know if…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9331,9332,990,6202,9330,210,1848,1182,9335,9334,9333,67,132,68,9329],"class_list":{"0":"post-7971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-americans","9":"tag-dariush-mozaffarian","10":"tag-food","11":"tag-food-dyes","12":"tag-food-labels","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-healthy-food","15":"tag-nutrition","16":"tag-nutritional-values","17":"tag-respondents","18":"tag-teresa-fung","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-yahoo"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114732686772674021","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/ad225520-4c6d-11f0-bfc7-1776d99212ee.png\"\/)
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<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/7063af20-4c6e-11f0-bfff-d72d06334750.png\"\/)
There\u2019s a name for that: The intention-action gap<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/9b895e70-4c6e-11f0-bebe-ea9bd22c93a7.png\"\/)
Experts\u2019 strategies to help you eat your values<\/strong><\/p>\n