Not eating at home linked to high risk mortality.

[Agartha]

A new study (published in March) has found a link between  eating meals prepared in restaurants and early death.

The researches followed more than 30,000 adults for approx 15 years. The study found that eating out reduced people's lifespans by increasing their risk of death by 49%. People who eat out also had a 65% greater chance of dying of cancer... those numbers are serious! 


Link to the study here: https://jandonline.org/article/S2212-2672(21)00059-9/fulltext?dgcid=raven_jbs_etoc_email

Association Between Frequency of Eating Away-From-Home Meals and Risk of All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality

Background

Dining out is a popular activity worldwide. Evidence on the association between eating meals away from home and long-term health outcomes is still limited.

Objective

The objective of this study was to examine the association of frequency of eating meals prepared away from home with all-cause and cause-specific mortality.

Participants/setting

This study included 35,084 adults aged 20 years or older from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey 1999-2014, who reported their dietary habits including frequency of eating meals prepared away from home in a questionnaire during face-to-face household interviews.

Main outcome measures

All-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality, and cancer mortality were ascertained by linkage to death records through December 31, 2015.

Statistical analyses performed

Multivariable Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate adjusted hazard ratios of mortality from all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality.

Results

During 291,475 person-years of follow-up, 2,781 deaths occurred, including 511 deaths from cardiovascular disease and 638 death from cancer. After adjustment for age, sex, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, dietary and lifestyle factors, and body mass index, the hazard ratio of mortality among participants who ate meals prepared away from home very frequently (2 meals or more per day) compared with those who seldom ate meals prepared away from home (fewer than 1 meal/wk) was 1.49 (95% CI 1.05 to 2.13) for all-cause mortality, 1.18 (95% CI 0.55 to 2.55) for cardiovascular mortality, and 1.67 (95% CI 0.87 to 3.21) for cancer mortality.

Conclusions

Frequent consumption of meals prepared away from home is significantly associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality. The association of eating meals prepared away from home with cardiovascular mortality and cancer mortality warrants additional investigation.

[TrueCrazyLion]

Very good, thorough, and interesting study!

I guess you can never beat science when it comes to cold hard facts.

[Agartha]

Nope, you can't... I hope other ( similar) studies will follow up because the numbers are too important to ignore. 

I am sharing this with all the people I know, especially those born in the UK as they seem to enjoy takeaways more than foreign born like me (including my kids, they love McD etc).

[TrueCrazyLion]

Yep, very good point. I’m very aware of the irony of me responding to this thread BTW, with my diet and diet history! LOL  

I’m guessing the UK is the biggest country(After the USA itself) to embrace the American-style fast food culture. When I lived in student accommodation in Dundee Uni Halls and I had flatmates from France and Spain, they also bought and cooked their own food rather than eating out/getting takeaways. Even after getting home from a night out, which I thought was super impressive!

[Rogue]

It would be interesting to know what the % of 'meals prepared away from home' were fast food takeaways versus better dine-in restaurants. I often wonder how restaurants compare to the fast food that we know are so bad. 

Home cooked meals for the win!!!

[Kaere]

I think there's a lot of pre-prepped food in the restaurant business, especially with chains. Lots of salt and other stabilizers

[Lenzabi]

Gordon Ramsey stresses over making sure you get local and fresh ingredients, hates microwaved food served as fresh by some restaurants he has been asked to help out, "Kitchen nightmares"  Problem is his eateries are for the well off money-wise.

[Agartha]

But even Gordon Ramsay's restaurants chop food and prepare from early morning or even the night before, which means loss of nutrients. I wrote about his on this thread last year:

https://islanders.canadian-forum.com/t2404-home-made-food-v-takeaways?highlight=food

2) Nutrition: home cooking uses fresh ingredients. In restaurants they prepare dishes the night before or in the morning and then things are either thrown together in a pan or re-heated when somebody places an order. Once vegetables are chopped, they start a natural oxidation process and they start losing vitamins. Sometimes they are not cooked until eight hours later, which means that, by then, they have lost lots of nutrients (not completely depleted but it depends on the vegetable and how they are stored… spinach, for example, can become depleted of nutrients 24 hrs later. What contributes to nutrient loss in cut veggies are light, heat and oxygen). At home you usually chop and cook, which means you are eating all their goodness.

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