Related BLS programs | Related articles
Food-at-home expenditures of Asian households
Shiao-Lin Shirley Tsai and Lucilla Tan
Asian Americans are one of the fastest growing racial groups in terms of percentage increase in the United States.1 According to Census estimates, the Nation抯 Asian and Pacific Islander population grew 43.0 percent to 10.8 million between 1990 and 1999; projections to 2050 are for a tripling in size to 33.4 million.2 The growth of the Asian American population, together with the growing interest in healthful and diverse diets, has contributed to Asian food becoming more popular. Aside from the proliferation of Asian eateries in local neighborhoods, restaurants in major metropolitan areas such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Seattle are offering Asian-influenced recipes from different Asian countries, served with an upscale American style.
The traditional plant-based rural diets of Asia are reflected in the Asian Diet Pyramid. (See exhibit 1.) Researchers at Cornell and Harvard University teamed up with other experts and the nonprofit foundation, Oldways Preservation & Exchange Trust, to unveil the Asian Diet Pyramid. The Asian Diet Pyramid was based on a survey of more than 10,000 families in mainland China and Taiwan that studied diet, lifestyle, and disease across the far reaches of China. The pyramid emphasizes rice, rice products, noodles, breads, and grains (preferably whole grain and minimally processed foods), topped by another large band of fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds. Small daily servings of low fat dairy products or fish are optional; sweets, eggs, and poultry are recommended no more than weekly, and red meat no more than monthly.
This excerpt is from an article published in the June 2006 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.
Read
abstract Download
full article in PDF (163K)
Footnotes
1
See Jessica S. Barnes and Claudette E. Bennett, "The Asian
Population: 2000," Census 2000 Briefs and Special Reports, C2KBR/01�
(U.S. Census Bureau, February 2002); and Frank Hobbs and Nicole Stoops,
"Demographic Trends in the 20th Century," Census 2000 Briefs and
Special Reports, CENSR�(U.S. Census Bureau, November 2002), figure 3.6.
2 See http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2000/US/08/30/minority. population/. Also see "Table 1a: Projected Population of the United States, by Race and Hispanic Origin: 2000 to 2050," U.S. Interim Projections by Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin, (U.S. Census Bureau) on the Internet at http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/usinterimproj/.
Related Monthly Labor Review articles
The changing food-at-home budget: 1980 and 1992 compared.�a href="/opub/mlr/1998/12/contents.htm">Dec. 1998.
Within Monthly Labor Review Online:
Welcome | Current Issue | Index | Subscribe | Archives
Exit Monthly Labor Review Online:
BLS Home | Publications & Research Papers
