Nutritional quality of foods at and away from home

Food Review, May-August, 1997 by Biing-Hwan Lin, Elizabeth Frazao

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According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, fat intake should be limited to no more than 30 percent of total dietary calories, and saturated fat intake should be below 10 percent of total calories. Because each gram of fat generates an average of 9 calories, the recommendations can be expressed as 33.3 grams of fat and 11.1 grams of saturated fat per 1,000 calories -- a measure termed "benchmark" density in this study. By comparing the nutrient density with this benchmark, we can evaluate the nutritional quality of foods against recommended intakes. (Tables 2, 3, and 4 also report nutrient densities for all foods consumed, which are weighted averages of densities for home and away-from-home foods. Thus the nutrient densities for all foods measure the nutritional quality of overall diet.) It is known that energy and nutrient intakes from dietary recall surveys are subject to underreporting. Consequently, the benchmark density calculated from reported intakes tends to be smaller than the actual density

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All of the food outlets had higher average fat densities than the benchmark densities (table 2). While many Americans have made substantial progress in reducing the fat content in their diets over the past few decades, many individuals in all age groups need to continue reducing the fat content in all food sources -- particularly from away-from-home foods -- in order to meet recommended levels.

Away-from-home foods had a higher average cholesterol density than home foods (136 mg versus 127 mg per 1,000 calories), mainly because of the high cholesterol density of restaurant foods (182 mg per 1,000 calories -- almost 50 percent higher than the cholesterol density of home foods and fast foods). Restaurant foods eaten by children had a cholesterol density 16 percent higher than that of home foods (table 3). Among adults, the cholesterol density of restaurant foods, at 187 mg per 1,000 calories, is almost 50 percent higher than home foods or fast foods (table 4).

Many health authorities recommend that daily cholesterol intake should not exceed 300 mg -- regardless of age and gender. The benchmark cholesterol density, 300 mg of cholesterol divided by a person's reported caloric intake, varies from person to person because individual caloric intake varies from person to person. We calculate a benchmark density for specific groups of individuals by summing the recommended intakes of a nutrient for all individuals in the group and dividing by the sum of those individuals' reported caloric intakes.

Based on 1995 reported caloric intakes, the benchmark cholesterol density for all Americans age 2 and older was 150 mg for each 1,000 calories consumed (table 2). The average cholesterol density of home foods in the survey was 127 mg per 1,000 calories, and away-from-home foods was 136 mg per 1,000 calories (table 2). Adult males age 18-39, however, had a much lower benchmark density of 107 mg of cholesterol per 1,000 calories because they tend to eat more than others do (table 4). Yet their cholesterol density was 123 mg per 1,000 calories for home foods and 170 mg per 1,000 calories for restaurant foods (table 4). To meet their recommended cholesterol intake, adult males need to choose foods low in cholesterol, especially considering the fact that nutrient intakes are likely to be underreported in dietary recalls.