Eating Out of Home and Risk for Obesity: An Overview

Despite Mediterranean dietary pattern has become a healthy eating standard, even Mediterranean countries such as Italy, show a progressive disaffection from this diet in parallel to the increasing trend in prevalence of body overweight and obesity and correlate pathologies. The causes that led to the explosion of the body overweight and obesity phenomenon and the differences in the prevalence of this condition among various social groups, are cultural and economic as well as biological and epidemiological. In developed countries out-of-home eating, defined as the consumption of foods and beverages out of home, has received increasing attention among cultural and behavioral factors linked to obesity. Indeed, with the rapid development of economy, diet habits have undergone great changes. An increasingly number of people, especially in urban settings, is eating out of home not only for working people during their lunch break, but also at dinnertime. Studies showed that a very high dietary energy content of both full service and fast-food restaurant meals is a widespread phenomenon and that there is a positive relationship between the consumption of food away from home and weight gain. This has garnered considerable attention from public health experts in formulating national policies and programs designed to curb the growing trends in obesity. USA, Canada and Australia, proposed calorie-labeling policy that required chain restaurants to post the calorie content of items on menus. In Europe, there is not such a policy yet. Unfortunately, many studies show that menu restaurant calories and nutritionallabeling mandatory policies did not have achieved the set goals in guiding consumers throughout restaurant menu to choose healthier dishes in terms of less calories and nutrients composition. Probably, educational and information campaigns are factors to put beside calorie and nutrient labeling.