The bar charts show how regularly people in the USA ate fast food in 2003, 2006, and 2013.
Overall, although most people ate fast food, frequent consumption generally experienced a downward trend, while there was an upward trend in less frequent consumption, and more extreme patterns remained relatively unchanged.
At the top and bottom ends of the scale, most patterns changed slightly in 2006 then remained stable. Over the ten-year period, the proportion of people who rarely included fast food in their diet increased, rising from approximately 13% to 15%, while the two most extreme patterns decreased. Interestingly, these had the lowest figures overall, with only slightly more people never eating fast food (5% falling to 4%) in comparison to those eating it daily (4% declining to 3%).
More regular consumption had higher figures, and similar trends were observed in those who ate fast food once or multiple times a week. Despite increasing in 2006 (from approximately 31% to 33% and 17% to 20% respectively), they both fell in 2013, to 27% and 16%. In contrast, the figures for once or twice per month fell initially (from 30% to 25%) before rising to around 37%. Notably, this marked a peak in the data, showing that most people ate fast food on a monthly rather than a weekly basis by the end of the period.