[dredmorbius]

Does that control at all for type of restaurant, both by market segment (e.g., fast food vs. sit-down fine dining), and by cuisine (e.g., "American" or "steakhouse" vs. various ethnic or vegetarian menus)?

Because I could see a lot of variability amongst those. And without controls, the study will default strongly toward fast-food, doughnut shops, pizza, burger / franks stands, and the like. Several of which have pronounced associated negatives (see, e.g., Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me (2004).

I find some restaurant meals strike me as far better than others. Taquerias, Thai and Vietnamese food, better vegetarian restaurants (say, Greens in SF), for example. Specific choices such as sides, beverages, alcohol, and whether or not the restaurant permits smoking (some parts of the US still allow this barbaric practice) would likely be huge confounding factors.

I'm not discounting home-cooked meals, and generally far prefer them myself. But overly-broad, undifferentiated analysis is ... not especially illuminating.

[dustincoates]

> Several of which have pronounced associated negatives (see, e.g., Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me (2004).

There may be associated negatives, but Super Size Me is a terrible piece of evidence of it. Spurlock not only intentionally ate far more than any normal person would, but also declined to mention in the movie his copious alcohol consumption. (Not that I expect someone to admit to their alcoholism in a movie, but when you're making a polemic about how what you consume is bad for you, not mentioning that you're drinking a lot of alcohol during the same period isn't great!)

[dredmorbius]

TBH I was mentioning SSM more as an exemplar than as hard science, and there are plenty of other indicia (rigorous or anecdotal) which suggest a consistent fast-food diet is other than health-inducing. I'm not aware of Spurlock's alcohol consumption during the trial, and there is the fact that he reversed much of the damage at the time following his partner's dietary advice (she is a dietician AFAIR).

If you've any links or references to share I'd be interested.

[ghaff]

I don't unless I'm traveling but eating a couple modestly portioned meals a week which, yes, you can do in the US, is healthy enough as part of a basket of options. And often better than whipping up a lot of things you can make with 15 minutes of effort from the grocery store.

[ghaff]

I also suspect that a lot of the people who are eating out in restaurants all the time are on planes a lot and at late business dinners, many of which are determined by "safe" customer choices like steakhouses. (Though, without further info, I also suspect to it defaulting to fast food on an absolute basis.)

[dredmorbius]

Also: truckers (largest single occupational category in many classifications), cabbies, trades workers, etc., etc. If you're in a captive market, whether that's airports, convention centres, motorway service areas, lunch wagon, lunchroom, etc., your choices are going to be limited.

On business travellers vs. truckers, I'm finding ~ 3.5 million truckers in the US, who all but certainly eat on the road at least one meal per day (local) and more likely 3+ (long-haul). <https://schneiderjobs.com/blog/truck-drivers-in-usa>.

For corporate travel: there are ~400 million long-distance business trips annually <https://www.trondent.com/business-travel-statistics/>. Trips-per-person is harder to find, though one source gives 6.8 trips/year, which gives 60 million travellers/year. So that's more than truckers ... but it's a lot fewer trips (and meals). I'd put money on there being more trucker meals-out than business travelers'.

Fleshing out further: we really want trips per year, for each classification. I'm going to assume truckers are on the road 250 days/year (roughly 5 days/week) ... we'll do variance after in case I'm wrong. That gives 3.5 million * 250 or 875 million trucker trips/year, more than double the business air travel number. We could cut trucker travel in half and still be somewhat above the business air travel trips figure.

[ghaff]

Whatever the exact number, it's probably safe to say that directionally way more "meals out" are grabbing some variety of fast food than some variety of upscale/fine dining. Not all that fast-ish food is unhealthy/bad but a lot is as a steady diet. Which just reinforces the point that drawing a broad brush eating out will kill you doesn't have a lot of support. Eating at a nice restaurant once a month is almost certainly not a killer.

[dredmorbius]

I tend to agree on all points.

The truckers vs. business travellers comparison was mostly me just trying to suss out what the relative magnitudes of those were. Information's sketchy, but inferences can be drawn. That was independent of your points, which are valid and insightful.

And yeah, the idea that 1) most "restaurant" meals are fast-food franchises and 2) that's not especially healthy on a consistent basis, as well as that 3) specific choices about menu items can have a major impact are ... fairly self-evident. Pity the study doesn't seem to address those, at least based on the unembargoed bits at the shared link above.