American diets may have gotten healthier and more diverse in the months following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers. The study -; published in PLOS ONE -; found that as states responded to the pandemic with school closures and other lockdown measures, citizens' diet quality improved by up to 8.5% and food diversity improved by up to 2.
6%. Co-author Edward Jaenicke, professor of agricultural economics in the College of Agricultural Sciences, said the findings provide a snapshot of what Americans' diet and eating habits might look like in the nearly complete absence of restaurant and cafeteria eating. When dine-in restaurants closed, our diets got a little more diverse and a little healthier.
One post-pandemic lesson is that we now have some evidence that any future shifts away from restaurant expenditures, even those not caused by the pandemic, could improve Americans' food diversity and healthfulness." Edward Jaenicke, professor of agricultural economics, College of Agricultural Sciences Prior to the pandemic, the researchers said, the average U.S.
diet was considered generally unhealthy. According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, eating patterns in the U.S.
have remained far below the guidelines' recommendations, with only slight improvements in the population's average Healthy Eating Index score between 2005 and 2016. Also, before the pandemic, the research team was in the midst of a grant-funded project that .
