The Impact of Food Away From Home on Adult Diet Quality
by
Jessica Todd,
Lisa Mancino, and
Biing-Hwan LinEconomic Research Report No. (ERR-90) 24 pp, February 2010
Most Americans eat too few fruits, vegetables, and whole grains,
but also consume too much saturated fat, sodium, and added sugar.
Americans spend a large share of their food budget (42 percent) on
food away from home (FAFH), which has been found to be less
nutritious than food prepared at home.
What Is the Issue?
Many unobservable factors influence both the choice of what and
where to eat, such as individual food preferences, dietary
awareness, and time constraints. Not accounting for these
unobservable, relevant factors has been shown to overestimate
FAFH's impact on caloric intake and overall diet quality. Building
on previous work, this report circumvents this issue by using 2
days of dietary intake data from 1994-96 and 2003-04 to estimate
how individual changes in the number of meals eaten away from home
affect various components of diet quality, such as intake of dairy,
vegetables, whole grains, and fat, for the average adult. The
analysis allows the effect of FAFH to vary across eating
occasions-breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snacks-and compares the
impact of FAFH over time and across individual characteristics,
such as gender, weight, and dieting practices.
What Did the Study Find?
For the average consumer, eating one meal away from home each
week translates to roughly 2 extra pounds each year. Although it is
possible to incorporate FAFH into a healthy diet, for the average
adult, one additional meal eaten away from home increases daily
intake by about 134 calories. In addition, the extra meal way from
home lowers diet quality by about two points on the Healthy Eating
Index (HEI-2005), enough to shift the average adult's diet quality
from a classification of fair to poor.
The impact of FAFH is greatest on the number of servings of
fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and dairy per 1,000 calories, but
varies according to the meal. On average, the number of servings of
fruit per 1,000 calories (dietary density) is reduced by as much as
22.3 percent (from lunch from FAFH), and the effect on the dietary
density of whole fruit is even larger (reduced by 31.5 percent).
The negative effects on the density of whole grains and dark green
and orange vegetables in the diet are similarly large for the
average adult (reduced by 26.8 and 31.4 percent, respectively). By
comparison, effects on less healthful components (milligrams of
sodium per 1,000 calories and percent of calories from saturated
fat, solid fat, alcohol, and added sugar) range between 1.9 and 9.3
percent for the average adult.
Some of FAFH's adverse effects on diet quality may be shrinking.
On average, the negative impact on the density of wholegrains in
the diet from eating breakfast away from home was not as strong in
2003-04 compared with 1994-96. The effect of snacks away from home
on the percent of calories from saturated fat intake has also
improved for the average adult.
There are few differences in the effects of FAFH on HEI-2005
components between obese and nonoverweight individuals. These
results suggest that portion size and/or a lack of compensation by
eating less throughout the rest of the day are likely the main
mechanisms by which FAFH increases total caloric intake more among
the obese.
How Was the Study
Conducted?
This analysis is based on dietary recall data from the 1994-96
Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals (CSFII) and the
2003-04 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).
Two days of dietary intake data from adults age 20 and older were
used to estimate how the number of meals eaten away from home
affects daily diet quality for the average adult. A fixed-effects
estimator was employed by taking the difference of the 2 days of
intake reported for each individual to account for relevant,
unobservable factors that influence both FAFH and diet quality.
Measures of diet quality include total daily caloric intake; total
daily HEI-2005 score; and daily HEI-2005 component dietary
densities, such as the number of
servings of fruit and vegetables per 1,000 calories.