Study says restaurant meals are just as unhealthy as fast food
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The best meals are always home cooked. We all need a nice balance of protein, fat, carbs (simple and complex), nutrients, fiber, etc with not too much of anything. A lot of restaurant food has extra sodium and anything to make it taste better, sometimes it might just be more than you need.0
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I think on that note too, its why I personally would never go out to eat everyday. I don't think of Buffalo Wild Wings, or TGI Fridays as "normal" food. Vague term I know but I don't see it as something I SHOULD be eating everyday. Im sure others have a different opinion though. That and I don't think its financially sustainable too Haha0 -
Anyone who thinks restaurant food is made the same way as the average person makes it at home has clearly never worked in a restaurant. There's a lot more fat and sugar added in than you typically would use in your kitchen; additionally, anything with a sauce is typically drowned in it rather than portioned out as you would. So you may think, "Oh, I make this kind of pasta at home, I know roughly how many calories are in it", but if you actually measured the ingredients as it was made, the calories would add up a lot more quickly than if you were making your recipe at home.
Issues like this are not impossible to work around, but awareness of them is helpful. Information is not something to sneer at just because you don't feel like you need it personally.0 -
Original research at http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/ejcn2015104a.html
Based on "National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 2003-2010" - isn't that based on vague recalls of intake ?
I don't speak American or have the full text, but when it says "The key predictors were any food/beverage consumption in a day from fast-food or full-service restaurant, differentiated by consumption at home versus away from home." am I right in thinking that the comparison is between food eaten in the place that cooked it rather than food brought in cooked and eaten in the home ? In other words a Big Mac and fries eaten at McD is "restaurant" but eaten in the car or at home is "fast food" ?0 -
kat_princess12 wrote: »Anyone who thinks restaurant food is made the same way as the average person makes it at home has clearly never worked in a restaurant. There's a lot more fat and sugar added in than you typically would use in your kitchen; additionally, anything with a sauce is typically drowned in it rather than portioned out as you would. So you may think, "Oh, I make this kind of pasta at home, I know roughly how many calories are in it", but if you actually measured the ingredients as it was made, the calories would add up a lot more quickly than if you were making your recipe at home.
Issues like this are not impossible to work around, but awareness of them is helpful. Information is not something to sneer at just because you don't feel like you need it personally.
I don't think anyone is sneering at the information, I personally take issue with the use of the word "unhealthy" as if it is the restaurant's fault. There is nothing inherently unhealthy about the way that restaurants prepare food. And I agree that for some people, this kind of knowledge about sodium and fat may be helpful when choosing to eat out or what specifically to order. I am not a fan of the constant blame of external factors, rather than people taking personal responsibility for their choices that impact their own health.
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stevencloser wrote: »Why did they only check for fat as the only macronutrient? I thought carbs were the booman?
I wondered why as well. And which restaurants. And frankly, I wondered if the photo was supposed to be representative of fast food or restaurant food.
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californiagirl2012 wrote: »The best meals are always home cooked. We all need a nice balance of protein, fat, carbs (simple and complex), nutrients, fiber, etc with not too much of anything. A lot of restaurant food has extra sodium and anything to make it taste better, sometimes it might just be more than you need.
Why are the best meals always home cooked? I'm not sure the average person prepares a balanced, nutrient dense meal at home on a regular basis. With the prevalence of food choices at a restaurant, I think there could be a better chance of someone ordering a salad or a meal that is served with vegetables, than what they may make themselves at home.
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Original research at http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/ejcn2015104a.html
Based on "National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 2003-2010" - isn't that based on vague recalls of intake ?
I don't speak American or have the full text, but when it says "The key predictors were any food/beverage consumption in a day from fast-food or full-service restaurant, differentiated by consumption at home versus away from home." am I right in thinking that the comparison is between food eaten in the place that cooked it rather than food brought in cooked and eaten in the home ? In other words a Big Mac and fries eaten at McD is "restaurant" but eaten in the car or at home is "fast food" ?
I rented the study.
It IS a recall-based study. They look at two days. People apparently say what they ordered/ate.
They have 4 categories: fast food (home and away) and full-service (home and away). So no, McD's is always fast food.
The major point is that people consume more calories at a restaurant (edit: eaten home or away) than at home (edit: I mean a home-cooked meal), which seems mind-boggling obvious to me. How many more varies somewhat by various income, education, and racial groups.0 -
I never thought that sit-down restaurant food was more healthy than McDonald's. I'm not even sure why anyone would make that assumption.0
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Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »Why did they only check for fat as the only macronutrient? I thought carbs were the booman?
I wondered why as well. And which restaurants.
I wondered this too, which is why I wanted to look at the overall study.
The restaurants are just the ones the people chosen for the survey happened to go to, so disproportionately the restaurants that are most commonly attended, I'd imagine.
There's an issue here, as one of the points that the authors are trying to make is that the current policy of requiring calorie listing for chains is inadequate, as fast food is no more caloric than other restaurants (perhaps even less, on average). But most likely a high percentage of the "full-service" restaurants are chains (in other words places that do or soon will be forced to provide the information in question) and also not places people think are "healthy."
People who attend a lot of the restaurants that would never include calorie information (like high end places or tiny local places) are a smaller percentage of the population and--or at least based on my anecdotal experience--likely to be more sophisticated about what the meals consist of. (They might even be irritatingly obsessive about it, in a foodie or other pretentious sort of way. Or this just could be where I live.) ;-)0 -
In other breaking news water is discovered to be wet...
Illogical post is illogical. Restaurants use the same ingredients as people use at home to make meals. Food. How much of that food you choose to eat, and how often you choose to indulge in that type of food, is up to you as the consumer. Blaming being unhealthy on restaurant food is ridiculous.
I never knew that restaurants use the same ingredients that people use at home. That's me set straight then.
It could be of course that restaurants, like most businesses, seek to maximise profits by driving consumption and do so by making food highly palatable and high in portion size which helps exceed maintenance calories...
Does "highly palatable" have a definition other than delicious or something similar?
I've seen that phrase used to describe restaurant or fast food like its somehow nefarious to try to make food that tastes really good. When I cook, I try to make highly palatable food.
Yeah, I think most pro cooks (and also food scientists) have a pretty good idea about what kinds of foods/meals/products inspire people to eat a lot of those goods, because it's their job to generate money doing that. Butter (or other fat), salt, sugar.
Very few people eat cabbage salad to excess ad libitum.0 -
You can be sorry all you want, but if you, as a competent adult, put the food in your mouth, you're the responsible party.peter56765 wrote: »DeguelloTex wrote: »
Unless gangs of restaurants are roaming the streets, beating people until they eat too many french fries, your position on whose fault something is lacks substance.WinoGelato wrote: »In other breaking news water is discovered to be wet...
Illogical post is illogical. Restaurants use the same ingredients as people use at home to make meals. Food. How much of that food you choose to eat, and how often you choose to indulge in that type of food, is up to you as the consumer. Blaming being unhealthy on restaurant food is ridiculous.
I never knew that restaurants use the same ingredients that people use at home. That's me set straight then.
It could be of course that restaurants, like most businesses, seek to maximise profits by driving consumption and do so by making food highly palatable and high in portion size which helps exceed maintenance calories...
They may place a large portion in front of you, but you don't have to eat it. Many people choose to order together, and split an entree, or eat half, and get a take home box for the left overs.
choices.
But even a small portion can be loaded with oil and butter. Your point isn't really valid, honestly. Plus I guess I'm a special snowflakes because 90% of the time, if I boxed half of my restaurant meals for later, I'd be hungry 2 hours later, if that...
Heck I've ordered some 'light' options for 550 calories that I could have made at home for 350.
But anyway, it's not really a surprise. Just look at nutrition info online. It's scary. I just don't understand the point of making a study out of it when it's obvious in the first place. Of course it doesn't help that in most places, the 'vegetable' of choice with meals is French fries.
Why is her point invalid? I think what mccindy is saying, and I agree with her, is that there is nothing inherently unhealthy about a restaurant meal, it may or may not be unhealthy for an individual consumer based on how they fit it into their overall lifestyle. If they have hypertension, then yes the sodium could be an issue. If they are regularly exceeding calorie goals, then yes, restaurant meals may make it difficult to stay within a calorie budget. But ultimately it isn't the food itself or the restaurant that should be labeled unhealthy. It is the person who is making those choices to exceed sodium, or calories, or fat, that is making unhealthy choices. That same person could do the same things when cooking at home though.
Ok I get the whole 'nothing is unhealthy' in moderation thing. But I don't feel like arguing semantics. My point is that 99% of restaurant meals will be more than half the calories of what the average 'non overweight' American should eat in a day.
And that's the problem, considering that people typically eat 3 meals a day. I will *never* buy the whole 'it's people's fault' argument. It's not entirely. When 99% of options in restaurants come with 400 calories of French fries or 300 calorie dressings, that's a problem too.
You'll never convince me otherwise, so might as well agree to disagree at this point.
Sorry but the point stands. The assumption when you prepare and present a meal for someone is that they are getting one "meal's" worth. That's how it works at home and that's how it used to work in most restaurants. The trend over the past few decades however, is for restaurants to overload their plates with too many calories - bigger portions, fried, drowning in butter and cream sauces, loaded with salt. So of course no one is forcing you to eat everything on your plate but unless you bring a food scale with you and quiz the chef on what ingredients he used, it's quite hard to know how much of a restaurant meal you should be eating.
The obesity epidemic in the First World no doubt has many causes. We're more sedentary, we eat out more, and we have drugs and better surgical procedures that keep us alive when obese. What hasn't changed is us: Homo Sapiens. We're no better or worse than our forebears and there's no reason to think that if people from 200 years ago were transplanted to today, they would not also become obese in the same ratios as everyone else. So I think it would be incomplete to say that the food supply, including restaurant food portions, plays no part at all in the problem. Is it the only cause? Of course not. Is it a contributing problem? Yeah, probably.
One can pretty easily find ballpark estimates of the calories and macros in just about anything you're likely to find in a mainstream restaurant. I don't need to know the chef's recipe for his hollandaise sauce to know that I probably shouldn't ladle on the stuff. The idea that one must know exactly what and how much one is eating is pretty specious and, in any case, would apply to homemade food at someone else's home, unless you're going to quiz the cook and weigh your portion.
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I never thought that sit-down restaurant food was more healthy than McDonald's. I'm not even sure why anyone would make that assumption.
Actually I think they found that restaurant meals had more good stuff in them (as well as sodium) than fast foods, didn't they?
(Also not for nothing but I reckon 80 cals could easily = a handful of complementary olives or bread / butter)0 -
WinoGelato wrote: »In other breaking news water is discovered to be wet...
Illogical post is illogical. Restaurants use the same ingredients as people use at home to make meals. Food. How much of that food you choose to eat, and how often you choose to indulge in that type of food, is up to you as the consumer. Blaming being unhealthy on restaurant food is ridiculous.
I never knew that restaurants use the same ingredients that people use at home. That's me set straight then.
It could be of course that restaurants, like most businesses, seek to maximise profits by driving consumption and do so by making food highly palatable and high in portion size which helps exceed maintenance calories...
They may place a large portion in front of you, but you don't have to eat it. Many people choose to order together, and split an entree, or eat half, and get a take home box for the left overs.
choices.
But even a small portion can be loaded with oil and butter. Your point isn't really valid, honestly. Plus I guess I'm a special snowflakes because 90% of the time, if I boxed half of my restaurant meals for later, I'd be hungry 2 hours later, if that...
Heck I've ordered some 'light' options for 550 calories that I could have made at home for 350.
But anyway, it's not really a surprise. Just look at nutrition info online. It's scary. I just don't understand the point of making a study out of it when it's obvious in the first place. Of course it doesn't help that in most places, the 'vegetable' of choice with meals is French fries.
Why is her point invalid? I think what mccindy is saying, and I agree with her, is that there is nothing inherently unhealthy about a restaurant meal...
A lot of restaurant food is loaded with hidden calories, and minimal (or worse, inaccurate) nutritional information. That makes it by definition "unhealthy" for someone tracking what they eat.
You can't make a choice to "eat in moderation" if you don't know - can't know - what you're eating, which is why I personally, I avoid the places.
Ironically, this is exactly what makes a place like McDonalds a plausibly healthier choice than many (most?) sit-down places - it may not be the most nutritious food on the planet, but their vertically integrated food factory approach pretty much guarantees you can know exactly what you're eating, and thereby have the tools to make informed choices.
I always think it is great entertainment when I can play a round of Where's Waldo with my food. You're missing out.0 -
I know everyone requires peer reviewed articles, but I'm going to go ahead call the next huge breakthrough: food in Julia Child's cookbook are just as unhealthy as fast food (especially if we get to cherry pick which recipes).
Again, this seems to be a no brainer, but I do like the trend of chain restaurants having to provide calorie counts. Unfortunately, I like to go to a lot of small chains or local restaurants, so I have to use my best judgement and plan accordingly.
It's all about personal responsibility, but it is nice when we have more information about calorie count provided.0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »In other breaking news water is discovered to be wet...
Illogical post is illogical. Restaurants use the same ingredients as people use at home to make meals. Food. How much of that food you choose to eat, and how often you choose to indulge in that type of food, is up to you as the consumer. Blaming being unhealthy on restaurant food is ridiculous.
I never knew that restaurants use the same ingredients that people use at home. That's me set straight then.
It could be of course that restaurants, like most businesses, seek to maximise profits by driving consumption and do so by making food highly palatable and high in portion size which helps exceed maintenance calories...
They may place a large portion in front of you, but you don't have to eat it. Many people choose to order together, and split an entree, or eat half, and get a take home box for the left overs.
choices.
Errr, yeah, that's blindingly obvious if you spend some time consciously assessing the way you structure your eating.
Many people do not and associate restaurants as somehow being "better" for you than fast food places. Information likes this helps people like that consciously consider their choices.
People who are ignorant enough to not realize that restaurants that have indulgent food, large sizes, lots of cheese and butter, etc. (and I think most people know about the butter and the sizes, at minimum, as well as knowing what they order and that restaurant salads are often enormously caloric) are unlikely to read this study.
And again "better" is a vague term here and depends on context.
Eh? It's an article in the Huffington Post.
I I have seen a number of times people link to articles where the calorie count of some restaurants are cited and they are amazed at how high they are and frankly I am amazed sometimes myself.
I think if you go out on to the street and ask members of the public which they think is worse for them in a dieting sense most would go for fast food although the reality seems to me that many fast food places are "better" in terms of portion size and calorie count etc.
It probably depends on how sophisticated they are about restaurants.
And that in turn probably influences what restaurants they are thinking of and where they go.
I find it hard to believe that someone thinks McD's is significantly "less healthy" than Appleby's or Olive Garden or Cheesecake Factory or whatever, but who knows. (I think it's a wash and depends on context. The latter places are going to have more calories, probably.)
Someone who goes to lots of higher end restaurants is probably pretty aware of how many calories they can have, as well as the diversity that you find among them (and also probably able to make judgments based on the specifics).
Anecdotally, although I have in the past gained lots of weight in part due to higher end restaurants (I was being willfully blind and had never had to watch my weight before--I also became much more sedentary around the time I had the job that led me to go out to these places a lot), I also know lots of people who frequent these places, and on the whole they aren't particularly overweight--less so than the average American. So there's more to it than restaurant meals, obviously.
QFT
I'm a foodie. I go to restaurants to eat food and ingredients I couldn't prepare (or easily obtain) at home. When I eat at a restaurant I care about who made the food, where it comes from and the care and imagination in preparing it much more than what the calories in that food may or may not be. I consider Chain restaurants (Applebee's etc) the same as fast food, I'm not sure why they get differentiated apart from you pay to sit down in the first.0 -
What they really meant is that sit-down restaurant employees spit in your food just as often as fast food restaurant employees.0
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I guess when I go out to eat I take it as a luxury and a treat and really don't care too much about the calories/fat/carbs since I don't do it regularly. Unfortunately I know too many people who eat fast food/restaurant food 2-3 times a day and then wonder why they can't lose weight.
Agreed. I only eat out maybe once/month and when I do I prepare for it (work out longer, eat less during the day) to make up for it because I know it's going to be a lot. Even then, I usually only eat about half of my meal and bring the rest home. Then I look around the restaurant and see people finishing their plates and think "wow" about the amount of calories they just consumed and they probably don't even realize it.
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californiagirl2012 wrote: »The best meals are always home cooked. We all need a nice balance of protein, fat, carbs (simple and complex), nutrients, fiber, etc with not too much of anything. A lot of restaurant food has extra sodium and anything to make it taste better, sometimes it might just be more than you need.
Depends on your definition of 'best'. Best for nutrition value? Not necessarily. A lot of good restaurants have healthy options that are quite tasty. You may have to do some research before you go, but it's just as easy to eat healthy at most restaurants, especially if you limit your portions (such as ordering a half plate or taking leftovers home). Best for price? Probably true, at least for fast casual restaurants. But keep in mind that a meal is only as good as the quality of it's ingredients, and for some ingredients, you will pay a lot more for. Now, if you like simple recipes, yes, you can cook much more economically at home. But that brings me to my third point. Best for taste? Depends on your taste. My husband grills a truly awesome steak, but it's still not as good as the top prime steakhouse where we go for my birthday every year. I can cook a satisfying meal at home, but the only thing I can cook at home that's better than a restaurant is my spaghetti sauce, and that's thanks to my mom and grandmom. If we want a special meal, we go out to get it because there are things we eat that restaurant can do better than we can. So 'best' is rather subjective here. If all your bests equal you eating at home, then more power to you. But my bests don't always equal that, and so if I want to eat out, I make room for it in my calories. Simple as that.I know everyone requires peer reviewed articles, but I'm going to go ahead call the next huge breakthrough: food in Julia Child's cookbook are just as unhealthy as fast food (especially if we get to cherry pick which recipes).
Again, this seems to be a no brainer, but I do like the trend of chain restaurants having to provide calorie counts. Unfortunately, I like to go to a lot of small chains or local restaurants, so I have to use my best judgement and plan accordingly.
It's all about personal responsibility, but it is nice when we have more information about calorie count provided.
Don't forget Paula Deen, the Queen of Butter. Tasty as all get out, but wow major calories! There's a reason her son started his own show that takes a lot of her recipes and makes healthier versions of them!0 -
Not if you don't have your own pizza oven.californiagirl2012 wrote: »The best meals are always home cooked.
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