As Americans, were making some headway in our efforts to improve the quality of our diet, but were far from ideal levels.
Research shows that healthier eating prevented over a million premature deaths in the 13-year period from 1999 to 2012, along with 8.6 percent fewer heart disease cases, 1.3 percent fewer cancer cases, and 12.6 percent fewer type 2 diabetes cases.
An index that measures diet quality increased from 40 to over 48, but thats still a long way from the perfect score of 110.
Also, most of the improvement came from just two steps—reducing consumption of trans fat (largely because of government action to ban it) and sugar-sweetened beverages. Little progress was made in most of the key components of a healthy diet.......