It isn’t news that Americans love fast food, but knowing which state eats the most fast food might challenge some of your other assumptions about the industry. While Americans may claim they view grabbing some fast food as a treat or a luxury, especially with recent inflation, the reality is that it makes up a huge part of the nation’s diet. According to a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report, 30% of adult Americans will eat fast food on a given day, and almost 12% of all calories consumed by adults in America come from fast food. So while you may read stories about people cutting back on burgers from McDonald’s, fast food is still an essential part of most Americans’ eating habits. And of all the states in the U.S., no place eats as much fast food as Maryland.
That’s right, despite the reputation of the Chick-fil-A-loving South as America’s fast food hot spot, data from Escoffier shows that Maryland consumes the most. The report is based on three metrics measuring what percent of restaurants in a given state are fast food, the amount of fast food spots per capita, and what percent of food spending in the state goes to fast food, with the data coming from the Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Maryland’s ranking came from how many of its restaurants are fast food, 46.76%, while it also came in third in the per capita rankings at 87.57 fast food spots per 100,000 people.
Maryland Boasts The Nation’s Highest Percentage Of Fast Food Restaurants
The biggest challenger to Maryland was Nevada, which ranked number one in spending, with 21.79% of all food spending going to fast food. The overall rankings were based on a combination of all three factors, and Illinois, New York, and Hawaii rounded out the top five biggest lovers of fast food.
However, like all surveys, methodology can play a big part in the rankings. You may have read previously that West Virginia had the most fast food restaurants per capita, but that report was much more limited in scope. That research, by Pricelisto, only counted 22 familiar chains, while the Escoffier report used USDA data on all “limited-service restaurants,” which is simply defined as counter service. That means many popular regional fast food chains were excluded from the previous research, as well as some larger national chains like Jersey Mike’s and Little Caesars. Meanwhile, Escoffier’s definition would also capture not just chains, but smaller local fast food joints…