Your health: Are restaurant meals no better than fast food?

Restaurant meals no better than fast food?

Sitting down for a leisurely dinner at a full-service restaurant may sound like a healthier choice than grabbing a burger and fries at a drive-through. But is it really?

That's the question that University of Illinois researcher Ruopeng An set out to explore by analyzing 2003-2010 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from more than 18,000 Americans, The Washington Post reports.

It turns out that whenever you go out to eat, wherever that may be, you end up taking in an average of 200 more calories than if you eat at home, according to a paper published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

It gets worse.

In some respects restaurant outings appear to be less healthy than eating at a fast food outlet.

While you may be taking in more nutrients — like vitamins, potassium and omega-3 fatty acids depending on what you order — you're also likely to consume more sodium and cholesterol.

How does this happen?

“(Y)ou may be at higher risk of overeating in a full-service restaurant than when eating fast food,” An, a professor of kinesiology and community health, surmised.

He wrote that it appears that “dietary behavior is influenced by eating environment” and that various factors including longer dining time, socializing and greater variety might contribute to excess calorie intake at a full-service restaurant.

According to a separate paper in Public Health Nutrition published in August that came to similar conclusions, the increase in calorie intake at restaurants was higher for those with middle incomes versus high incomes and for black adults as compared to their white or Hispanic counterparts.

Is bread making you depressed?

Everyone knows that a diet full of white bread, pasta and rice is bad for your waistline. Now scientists say these types of refined carbs could also impact your mind — putting postmenopausal women at higher risk for depression, The Washington Post reports.

In a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers looked at data from more than 70,000 women who participated in the National Institutes of Health's women's health initiative between 1994 and 1998.

They found that the more women consumed added sugars and refined grains and the higher their score on the glycemic index (GI) — a measure of the rate carbohydrates are broken down and absorbed by the body — the more they were at risk of new-onset depression.

Those who had a different sort of diet — one with more dietary fiber, whole grains, vegetables and non-juice fruits — had a decreased risk.

“This suggests that dietary interventions could serve as treatments and preventive measures for depression,” wrote James Gangswisch, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center, and his co-authors.

The researchers explained that refined foods trigger a hormonal response in the body to reduce blood sugar levels. That is believed to lead to the “sugar high” and subsequent “crash” some people say they feel after eating such foods. This can lead to mood changes, fatigue and other symptoms of depression.