alt Hacker NewsThe 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...
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2400 is a massive amount of food ... for some people. This is why averages are pointless as recommendations.
I'm 6'3", 200 lbs, I lift and I run - I would be in a caloric deficit at 2400 calories.
My wife would be in a huge surplus.
Using unseasoned cooked chicken breast as your proxy for healthy food is...less absurd than using grapefruit would be, but not as much as you might think.
At least add like a quarter teaspoon of olive oil, an eighth of a cup of whole grain rice, and a side of like some sweet potatoes with its own seasoning or something.
Straight chicken breasts is like the meme level of what celebrities have to eat to maintain their figure, not what a reasonable human diet looks like. Chicken thighs with the skin on are reasonably healthy.