Food ?onsumed away from home Free Essay Example

Food can be put into 2 categories, namely, home made food and away from home food. Home- made foods are those whose ingredients are bought and processed and prepared at home for consumption. On the other hand, away from home foods are those that do not have to be prepared for, including those consumed from fast food outlets, public places, schools, restaurants, vending machines etc. Away from home foods are ready-to-eat and consumed, and the consumer has less control over portion size and nutritional content (Lin et.

al, 1999).

There are a lot of environmental influences that affect eating behaviours including the food prices, increased variety of snacks choices, increased variety of restaurant etc. Furthermore, people have busy lifestyles, both parent works in some families, so that the popularity of eating out is increasing due to the time limitations. The increased popularity of eating out was taken into concern about its impact on diet quality. Lot of research was carried out to investigate the nutrient differences between food consumed at home (home-made) and food consumed away from home.

Evidence showed that higher consumption of foods prepared away from home may cause poorer quality of diet among adolescents and the portion sizes are usually larger and contain high energy density compared to food prepared at home. These unhealthy dietary properties has a higher likelihood of increasing body weight. In addition, foods ate away from home and fast foods are more likely to be fried, or contain more oil. In other words, this would increase the intake of saturated and partially hydrogenated fat, which is known to increase cardiovascular disease risk.

Thompson et al(2004) found that adolescent girls in the UK had greater mean increase in BMI who consumed food purchased away from home twice a week compared with those who consumed food purchased away from home once a week or never. Studies also suggested that higher consumption of food prepared away from home lead to overweight and increased body fatness. (Taveras et al. 2005) Research from Adamson et al. (1996) said that food consumed away from home, school meals provided a higher density of fat and a lower nutrient density of protein, iron, Non- starch Polysaccharides than the intake from home.

And food from shop/cafe/tuck shop and other homes had a slightly lower density of fat (9. 5g/MJ) compared to the intake from home (10. 5g/MJ), but the density intake of sugars is considerably higher than intake from home( 26g/MJ Non- milk extrinsic sugars and 9-13g/MJ respectively). Other nutrient density, including protein, Non- protein polysaccharides, iron, calcium, vitamin C and retinol equivalents were all lower than the home intake.

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