A tasty business

Focuses on the two annual surveys conducted by The NPD Group aimed at tracking the tastes of consumers in the United States. Survey on NET (what we eat at home) and CREST (what we order in restaurants); Introduction of Create-A-Meal, a frozen combo of vegetables, pasta or potatoes; Information on 'Eating Patterns in America'; Increase in the percentage of people who have a drink with dinner.

By Leslie Whitaker, Dean Powell, published on January 01, 1999

Even so, such journals are much more accurate than phone surveys of dietary recall. "There's a social desirability factor," says Noel Chavez, associate professor of community health sciences at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "We all overestimate the good things we do and underestimate the bad things." Balzer puts it more bluntly: "Because what you eat says so much about you, if you ask people in a telephone survey what they prepared for dinner, they lie."

LESLIE WHITAKER

GRAPH: In a Dinner Slump (percent of meals that include side dish)

GRAPH: Fastest Growing Requests By Restaurant Patrons (orders in billions)

ILLUSTRATION (COLOR)