Caloric Intake Has Increased Among Statin Users but Not Among Nonusers

From the 1970s through the 1990s, overall caloric intake increased among U.S. adults, and the proportion of calories they consumed from fat decreased; both types of intake plateaued during 1999 and 2000. To explore whether these trends in food intake differed between statin users and nonusers, researchers used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to compare calorie and fat intake every 2 years in about 28,000 adults between 1999 and 2010.

Statin use more than doubled, from 7.5% in 1999 to 16.5% in 2010. Body-mass index increased by 1.3 kg/m² among statin users, compared with 0.5 kg/m² among nonusers. At the start of the study, statin users consumed about 200 fewer kilocalories daily than nonusers (2000 vs. 2179) and…