The bar chart illustrates the average shares in common meals of three nutrient categories can be harmful when consumed to excess in USA: breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.
Overall, dinner contributes the largest share of sodium and saturated fats, whereas snacks are the main source of added sugar. Breakfast is consistently the lowest in all three nutrients.
With regard sodium, dinner account for 43%, while lunch shows 29%;by contrast, breakfast and snacks contribute only 14% apiece, so the evening meal supplies roughly triple the breakfast level. Similarly, for saturated fat, dinner again leads at 37%,whereas lunch stands at 26% and snacks 21%; meanwhile, breakfast remains lowest at 16%.
Conversely, the pattern for added sugar is totally reversed: snacks dominate at 42%, witch is almost double the dinner’s 23% and substantially higher than lunch’s at 19% and the lowest of all breakfast with 16%.
Taken together, these figures suggest that, although the main dietary risks from salt and saturated fats arise at dinner, the greatest exposure to sugar stems from snacking.