Americans abandoning the diet (and eating food)

After decades of absurd diet regimes (that means you, Atkins), hundreds of billions spent on ineffective weight-loss products and the untold misery of fatless pork, it seems American's are putting aside the diet and - at long last - rediscovering food. One study shows

The percentage of those consumers who are on a diet is lower than at any time since information on dieting was first collected in 1985.

Another found that people are even cooking more:

53 percent of consumers say they are cooking from scratch more than they did just six months ago, in part, no doubt, because of the rising cost of prepared foods.

Assuming people treat this as a lifestyle change rather than just another fad, we would be looking at the biggest change in eating habits in at least a couple of generations. Hooray for that.