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This shouldn't be surprising. Of course staying home and making your own meals is the healthiest! Restaurant meals tend to have very large portions, frequently with rich sauces, and the meal choices tend to be heavy on fat and salt. Think of all the fried foods, rich sauces, meats,breads and butter, and desserts available. At home you can limit excess, control the food ingredients, and eat only healthy foods. From Medical Xpress:

Restaurant meals can be as bad for your waistline as fast food is

Restaurant and fast-food meals increase people's daily intake of calories, fats, cholesterol and sodium. Credit: Diana Yates 

When Americans go out to eat, either at a fast-food outlet or a full-service restaurant, they consume, on average, about 200 more calories a day than when they stay home for meals, a new study reports. They also take in more fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium than those who prepare and eat their meals at home.

These are the findings of University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Ruopeng An, who analyzed eight years of nationally representative data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which is conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics. An looked at 2003-10 data collected from 18,098 adults living in the U.S.

His analysis, reported in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, revealed that eating at a restaurant is comparable to - or in some cases less healthy than - eating at a fast-food outlet. While people who eat at restaurants tend to take in more healthy nutrients - including certain vitamins, potassium and omega-3 fatty acids - than those who eat at home or at a fast-food outlet, the restaurant diners also consume substantially more sodium and cholesterol - two nutrients that Americans generally eat in excess, even at home. 

Fast-food and restaurant diners consumed about 10 grams more total fat, and 3.49 grams and 2.46 grams, respectively, more saturated fat than those who dined at home. Eating at a fast-food outlet adds about 300 milligrams of sodium to one's daily intake, and restaurant dining boosts sodium intake by 412 milligrams per day, on average, An said. 

An also found striking differences in the effects of dining out on different groups."African-Americans who ate at fast-food and full-service restaurants took in more total fat, saturated fat, sodium and sugar than their Caucasian and Hispanic counterparts who dined out," An said. "The effect of fast-food restaurant consumption on daily total energy intake appeared larger among people with lower educational attainment," An said. "And people in the middle-income range had the highest daily intake of total energy, total fat, saturated fat and sodium when they dined at full-service restaurants." 

Two studies that talk about a healthy diet and health benefits.From Science Daily:

Home cooking a main ingredient in healthier diet, study shows

People who frequently cook meals at home eat healthier and consume fewer calories than those who cook less, according to new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research."When people cook most of their meals at home, they consume fewer carbohydrates, less sugar and less fat than those who cook less or not at all -- even if they are not trying to lose weight," says Julia A. Wolfson, MPP, a CLF-Lerner Fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and lead author of the study.The findings also suggest that those who frequently cooked at home -- six-to-seven nights a week -- also consumed fewer calories on the occasions when they ate out.

Wolfson and co-author Sara N. Bleich, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School, analyzed data from the 2007-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from more than 9,000 participants aged 20 and older... The researchers found that 8 percent of adults cooked dinner once or less a week and this group consumed, on an average day, 2,301 total calories, 84 grams of fat and 135 grams of sugar. Forty-eight percent of participants cooked dinner six to seven times a week and they consumed 2,164 calories, 81 grams of fat and 119 grams of sugar on an average day.

The research found blacks are more likely to live in households where cooking occurs less frequently than whites; and individuals who work more than 35 hours a week outside the home also cook less often.

From Medical Xpress:

Healthy diets are good for the kidneys

A healthy diet may help protect the kidneys, according to two studies that will be presented at ASN Kidney Week 2014 November 11¬-16 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA. Dietary modifications may be a low-cost, simple intervention to reduce the burden of chronic kidney disease (CKD). 

A higher-quality diet, as measured using 3 different scoring systems for dietary qualities known to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, was associated with a 16% to 23% reduced risk of needing dialysis or dying from kidney problems. Higher-quality diets included those high in fruits, vegetables, and unsaturated fats. The researchers also found that high sodium intake (average of 4.7g g/day) was linked with an increased risk of needing dialysis or dying from kidney problems, but no benefit was seen for low sodium intake (average 2.0 g/day) compared with moderate intake. In contrast, high potassium intake was associated with a reduced future risk.