The 3800 number was from the media misunderstanding/misrepresenting the data. The 3800 is calorie availability, not consumption. With calorie availability you take absolutely all food produced/imported and then divide by the population size. There's no reduction for waste, spoilage, inedibility, etc. [1]

Americans aren't eating anywhere near 3800 calories on average. 2400 calories is already a massive amount of food. That's 15 100g servings of chicken breast (cooked weight) for some baseline of what it means in terms of healthy food. Obviously lots of people are eating lots of junk that makes it easy to bring up the consumption, but it's still nowhere near 3800 on average.

[1] - https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-availability-per...

I thought you were pulling numbers out of your magic hat.

It seems true. Sorry for doubting you.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2024/10/14/weight...

I guess the 2400 for middle aged people is not that far off if in the 60s the average was right around there and people were healthier.

3800 on average?! What the hell. Makes me wonder why Americans aren't even more overweight than they already are.