How often do kids eat dessert in the Us?

September 20, 2019 1:08 PM

I’d like to know what the typical dessert consumption is in the US for kids. I can’t find any data on this. Can you?
posted by bq to Food & Drink (7 answers total)

Every school lunch I've ever heard of (and nearly every restaurant kids meal) has a small desert. So I'd guess pretty high.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:10 PM on September 20, 2019

If you're interested in really looking into the data, see What We Eat in America; some of the briefs here might be more accessible

Much food consumption, especially sweets, isn't as part of a regular meal. A teacher at a low-income school told me about when she had her class keep a food diary. She expected that it would be full of junk food, like sugary cereal for breakfast and burgers and fries for dinner. But many kids just ate what many people would consider snacks all day long: e.g., chips and soda for breakfast.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 1:19 PM on September 20, 2019 [3 favorites]

It took some looking, but I found this:

In its 29th annual Eating Patterns in America Report The NPD Group reports only 12 percent of dinners eaten at home include a dessert; that is down from 15 percent ten years ago. The highest dessert consumption The NPD Group found was in 1986 when 24 percent of all dinners included a dessert.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:48 PM on September 20, 2019 [4 favorites]

My children went to public school from K-8 and K-6, respectively, and they were never served a dessert with school-purchased lunch. They were given fruit with every purchased lunch, but not what one would consider a typical dessert. When they switched schools, they didn't get dessert with lunch, either, unless they bought it separately (and we quashed that pretty quickly because it got pricey).
posted by cooker girl at 1:55 PM on September 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

I'm curious about the methodology of that NPD study (I assume it's survey-based but the link on that page that might lead to details is broken) - If I were polled and asked "How often does the dinner served at your home include a dessert", I would say like... 1% of the time? If I were asked "How often is dessert eaten at your home", I would say 95% of the time. Dessert is not part of dinner just like a 3pm snack is not part of lunch, it's a separate thing that happens later, after dinner.
posted by brainmouse at 2:17 PM on September 20, 2019 [4 favorites]

Mod note: OP is looking for data, not anecdata!
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 4:02 PM on September 20, 2019 [1 favorite]

I didn't dig in too deeply, but you might be able to find something here in Statista's Child Health and Nutrition - Statistics & Facts page.
posted by jeremias at 5:25 AM on September 21, 2019