In this earlier post, I was skeptical of the finding that people increase their daily caloric intake by only 24 calories on a day that they eat out, compensating for the higher calorie level of restaurant food by eating less the rest of the day.
Now, with my Handy Stack (tm) of papers on obesity, I have some other data on this issue:
Data from the 1990’s Continuing Survey of Food Intake by Individuals (n = 8,550) revealed that, on average, fast food consumers ages 2-19 ate an extra 155 calories (an increase of 9%) and an extra 7 grams of fat (an increase of 11%) on the day they consumed fast food compared to other children. (Paeratakutal et al. 2003)
In a typical day, nearly one-third of children eat fast food. When they do, fast food contributes 29% to 38% of their total calories for the day, and they get more calories (an additional 187 calories, on average), total fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, and added sugars in their diet. (Bowman et al. 2004)
In a study of over 4,700 7th – 12th grade students in urban Minnesota, those who ate fast food three or more times per week ate approximately 40% more calories and 10% higher percentage of energy from fat, compared to those who ate no fast food. (French et al. 2001)
Adolescents ages 11-18 eat at fast food restaurants twice a week on average, and consume almost twice as many calories when they do eat out. (Eames and Orbuch 2006)
An econometric analysis of the 1994-1996 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals found that overweight adults were more likely to eat at restaurants than were people of lower body weight. This result was even stronger for table service restaurants than fast food. (Binkley 2006)
Seiders and Petty (2004) report a study finding that 62% of adult consumers believe that restaurant portions have remained the same size or are smaller than in the past, despite the fact that portion sizes in restaurants have grown. They also note that “consumers frequently discount the role of calories and large portion sizes in causing weight gain.” Previous studies have shown that people make food decisions based primarily on factors such as taste, price, and convenience and discount the health risks associated with unhealthy food choices. Research also suggests that restaurant dining opportunities are seen as a time for freer eating decisions and for consuming larger portions. (Seiders and Petty 2004)
Research has shown that consumers drastically underestimate the calorie content of restaurant foods, by as much as 55%. (McMann 2004)
The average reported calorie intakes by Americans ages 2 and older has risen from 1,876 in 1977 to 2,043 in 1995, an increase of 9%. The percentage of Americans who eat more than the recommended daily allotment of calories was 22% in 1987 and 31% in 1995. (Lin, Guthrie and Frazao 1999). Since self-reports of dietary intake are known to frequently underestimate the true food quantities (Subar et al. 2003), these figures represent conservative measures of excess calorie consumption.
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5 comments:
That sounds much more reasonable. It's not that it's impossible to eat restaurant-size meals at home, but most people just don't. You somehow balk at putting an entire stick of butter into the recipe, or your plates just aren't big enough to hold that much food at once, or the food just isn't delicious enough to entice you to eat 1800 calories of it at one time.
Makes you wonder who paid for the surveys that had the results of only 24 more calories a day - the restaurant industy?
Tam, right - and there definitely could be some degree of compensation by eating less the rest of the day, but given how huge restaurant meals tend to be, you'd have had to skip lunch entirely, probably, to eat dinner at a normal restaurant and come out only 24 calories above normal.
Mom, the "24 calorie" survey data was collected by the US Department of Agriculture, for what that's worth.
I wonder if the USDA might have gotten the wrong calorie counts by calculating the counts based on what people said they ate by name.
For instance, if I said I ate "a tuna fish sandwich," they might have a database that says that is 400 calories. In reality, a tuna fish sandwich at home is likely far fewer calories than one at a restaurant.
I'm not sure how they design these studies, of course, though I could find out if I were really motivated.
The whole "self-report of dietary intake" thing is a field of study in itself. People are known to (sometimes drastically) under-report their actual consumption, and the more a person eats, the more off they tend to be. (Hence the finding that fatter people under-report more than skinnier people; it's not really about the people, but the fact that bigger people eat bigger meals.) There are a lot of people working in the area of how to improve the various self-report measures for more accurate figures.
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