Relationship Between Frequent Eating and Risk of Death

Dining out has become a very popular activity all across the world; however, a very limited amount of research has been done regarding the association of frequent eating in restaurants with outcomes on health. Various investigative researches are being conducted which have provided the link between frequent eating out and possible risk of death, and concluded that frequently eating from outside has been significantly seen to be related with an escalated risk of death from different causes, due to which the research warrants further investigative experiments. This research has been published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Frequent consumption of outside meals

Dining out has become a popular activity in various countries located throughout the globe. According to the estimation done by the United States Department of Agriculture, the daily energy consumption of an average American citizen away from their residence has increased from 17% in the years 1977 to 1978 and jumped up to 34% in the years 2011 and 2012.

On the other hand, at the same time, the number of restaurants has steadily grown across the country, while it has been forecasted that the restaurant industry is expected to see a significant rise in the upcoming year due to the rapidly developing culture of frequently eating out.

Although there are some of the restaurants that do provide high-quality food items due to the frequent eating outside of the home setting, the nutritional quality of meals taken away from home, especially bought from any fast-food chain, tends to be of lower quality as compared to meals which are completely cooked at home.

There has been substantial evidence that supports that those meals which are consumed by an individual away from his home by frequent eating outside tend to have the higher unhealthy quantity of sodium, fat, and energy density while having a lower amount of whole grains, vegetables, fruits along with protective nutrients like antioxidants and dietary fibers, which could also result in developing risks of death.

According to the lead investigator and assistant professor at the Department of Epidemiology in College of Public Health, the University of Iowa that the evidence is still emerging, which has suggested that frequent eating out away from home have been related to the formation of escalated risk of chronic dysfunctions, including diabetes mellitus and obesity along with biomarkers of other long-term diseases. However, there is still ongoing research regarding the risk of death and its correlation with frequently eating meals away from own residence.

Public survey in the United States

A survey has been administered by investigators who have been able to analyze information from the responses gathered during interviews done face-to-face in numerous households and included 35,084 individuals who were aged 20 years or older those who participated during the health survey of National Health and Nutritional Examination in the year 1999 to 2014. The respondents for the survey provided reports regarding their dietary habits, which included their frequency of intake of daily meals which have been prepared away from their home.

These records were later linked to the mortality records of the United States through December 31, 2015, especially focusing on those records, which included cancer mortality, cardiovascular mortality, or all-cause mortality as their cause of death.

During the 291,475 person-years of follow-up, it can be observed that 2,781 mortalities have occurred, which includes 511 individual death from developing cardiovascular disease and 638 causes of deaths due to the formation of carcinogenic cells inside the body.

After the age, gender, ethnicity, lifestyle and dietary factorization, Body Mass Index (BMI), and socioeconomic status, the ratio of the risk of death among the participating individuals who were frequently eating meals prepared in an industrial setting on a daily basis (at least two or sometimes more meals in a single day), compared to those individuals who were able to consume meals from home on a daily basis and only seldom dined out (less than one meal in an entire week), the ratio came as 1.49 for all-cause death, 1.18 for death by cardiovascular dysfunction and 1.67 for mortality by cancer.

The conclusive findings from the large representative sample of the adults from the United States have shown that in case of frequent eating of food meals which have been prepared away from home have significantly been related to the rapid rise in the risk of developing an all-cause death.

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