According to the USDA, between ages twenty and fifty the average person spends about 28,000 hours eating—over 1160 days. Our daily schedules are often planned around mealtimes. Business deals are cut among people who "do" lunch together. Foods have been adapted to every aspect of our popular culture: we have TV dinners, car drive-up windows, and ballgame tailgate parties.

Each day anywhere from 45 to 125 million Americans are dieting (statistics vary depending on sources). At the time he published his book Fast Food Nation in 2001, Eric Schlosser stated that the annual health care costs in the US stemming from obesity approached $240 billion while Americans spent more than $35 billion on weight loss schemes and diet products. In 2010 the dietary industry earned $60.9 billion.