this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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2 North American 4 You
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American food always looks like it'd give you a heart attack if you got within 10m of it
People say that but the funny thing is that American food, even fast food, is not that greasy. Cultures that pan-fry food (like a lot of Eastern European ones) end up with way greasier food.
IMHO, the issue is not just deep or pan frying. It's about the kind of oil you use for that. South europe does fry stuff, but generally uses sunflower seed oil or, even better, olive oil.
Bro the US deep fries so much that even their memes are deep fried.
Deep-fried food is generally less greasy than pan-fried food.
Source: 'trust me bro' (says with mouth full of chips and donuts).
Most of my knowledge is from personal experience eating different countries' foods, and I wasn't able to quickly find official data for American vs. Eastern European diets that is more recent than the 80's (back when the CIA used to care what Russian people were eating) but at that time, a larger fraction of Soviet calories than American calories were from fat. I came to the USA not too long after the data for that graph was collected so I'm not particularly knowledgeable about what Eastern European home cooking is like today, but in my family we pan-fried things that Americans often deep fry (potatoes) or grill (meat) and I didn't even know what deep-frying was.
Source.
I certainly didn't think I'd be reading a CIA document this morning, its a damn shame that the only thing they provide of value to society has been ended by Trump (the publishing of a wide variety of demographic data in their CIA World Fact Book), anyway I appreciate the response.
I was not polite in my request and looking back on it I want to apologize for being inflammatory. Sorry.
That being said, your data doesn't show any comparison between the amount of grease (oil) in shallow fried foods vs deep fried foods, the chart you've shared just shows protein per capita per day changing over several decades.
Pan frying is healthier than deep frying for a host of reasons - it's done at lower temperatures than deep frying, which means different oils are generally used, and healthier oils are used for pan frying vs deep, the high temp process destroys many food nutrients and generates higher creation and absorption into food of trans fats. These reasons (and others) with references are in the Wikipedia article on deep frying.
Nutritionist/dietician comparing the two methods with further reasons: https://blogs.bcm.edu/2023/04/25/the-truth-about-fried-food/
I'm yet to see any indication that deep frying causes foods to absorb less fat that pan frying, it is in fact reported as the opposite in all sources I've seen (but can't find any studies directly comparing the two). I'm sure it could be found scientifically via looking at fat/oil measurements in deep fried foods in studies and the same measurments in pan fried and comparing them, but that would take more time than I have to spare today.
Hope you have a good one.
Oh it definitely is greasy, and sugary, and carbohydrated, and with a minimum of fibres.