Great-Tasting Recipes for Health

Food prepared away from home--in school or work cafeterias, sit-down restaurants or fast-food joints--accounts for nearly a third of the calories Americans consume each day and 40 percent of their total food budget. Regrettably, meals prepared away from home are often a less healthy source of sustenance than the meals people whip up in their own kitchens: Food service meals tend to have more saturated fat, total fat, cholesterol and sodium than meals prepared at home, and they tend to be higher in calories per meal; they also have less fiber, calcium and iron. Portion sizes of foods from takeout shops, fast food places, and family-style restaurants have been on the rise for the past three decades. With this supersizing trend, is it any surprise that people who frequently eat out consume more calories on average than people who rarely eat out?

Given that Americans will consume more than 70 billion commercially-prepared meals and snacks in 2007, food service establishments have a unique opportunity to influence how millions of people eat each week. By offering healthy dishes in appropriate portion sizes, food service operators can improve the diets of school children, college students, blue-collar and white-collar workers, homemakers, and the elderly. And they can demonstrate that emphasizing good health does not mean sacrificing great taste.

Learn more at: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/food_service.html