Cooking flavorful food for the masses motivates culinary professionals to fire up the flat top and begin the mise en place ritual. Maybe chefs have accomplished their jobs of preparing delicious meals a little too well. Since 2010, Americans spend the least amount of their food dollars on meals they consume in the house and the most dollars on the food they buy while away from home.

Have food dollars shifted away from home because chef-prepared food tastes that good? Not exactly… The number of two income earners in households has skyrocketed and that factors into meal decisions for time-strapped Americans. Another issue is the increased availability of conveniently prepared meals – like those found in grocery stores. Additionally, the exponential growth of quick-service restaurants has escalated the availability of food offered away from home. Many factors have led Americans to eat out more than at home. Additionally, eating food away from can be anything from a vending machine snack to fine-dining restaurants.

Food-away-from-home spending accounted for 55 percent of total foodexpenditures in 2021. That is a 10-percent increase over pre-pandemic levels.

Americans’ health outcomes have deteriorated as they have stopped cooking at home. Long-term chronic illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, gall bladder disease, fatty liver, arthritis and joint disorders, and specific cancers are rising. Why are Americans getting sicker? The answer: Americans are becoming more obese and obesity is a major factor in many negative health outcomes.

Nearly 32 percent of adults aged 18 and older were obese in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The connection between obesity and food eaten away from home
Studies show restaurant meals contain higher amounts of sodium, saturated fat and calories than home-cooked meals. As Americans have become reliant on foods eaten away from home, their consumption of fruits and vegetables has decreased. These eating patterns have created an environment where consumers’ intake of calories has increased as illustrated by the steadily increasing obesity and morbidly obese rates year after year. For instance, in 2011 27.4 percent of adults were obese; the obesity rate increased by nearly 5 percent in nine years.

However, the solution to America’s obesity-related health problems will be more than restaurants and vending machines offering nutritionally better food. It will need to be a multifaceted approach involving food manufacturers, foodservice chefs, consumers and a plethora of other stakeholders. In fact, small healthy shifts are occurring right now in various foodservice industry sectors.

Restaurants adding healthy menu options
Restaurants are a large foodservice sector covering everything from enormous corporations to small businesses with less than five employees. Researchers discovered that both large and small restaurants are making changes in their food offerings, however their motivations vary vastly.

A study from the National Library of Medicine in February 2021 found that restaurants have begun to offer healthy eating options and went one step further by promoting the health-based choices to their consumers. The article focused on restaurants that improved the foods offered and facilitated healthier eating through promotion, portion control and other environmental changes within the establishment.

The reasons behind offering more healthy food varied by restaurant type. According to the study, “Corporate restaurants were motivated by public health criticism, while independently owned restaurants were motivated by interests to improve community health.” They also found that revenue concerns and food sourcing also drove decision-making. The study noted that among the restaurants studied, “most outcomes were revenue positive.”

Large chain restaurants, such as Chipotle, are now offering healthier ingredients for customers to select when they customize their meals, such as vegetables, brown rice and legumes. In January 2022, the chain announced plant-based chorizo and Lifestyle Bowls that configure to  the nutritional standards of popular diets such as Keto, Paleo, Vegan and Vegetarian. CAVA, a Mediterranean quick-service restaurant, is another restaurant chain offing healthier ingredients. The website states, “We are proud that our products never contain artificial additives or preservatives, so they maintain their fresh, natural taste. All (CAVA dips and spreads) are vegetarian, low in calories, fat and sodium. Most are vegan and gluten free.”

Chefs’ skillsets can help create healthy food beyond vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free menu items
Health-conscious consumers are asking for more plant-based options and restaurants are accommodating the request. Global retail sales of plant-based foods are on track to be worth as much as $162 billion by 2030. However, consumers who focus on plant-based options for health reasons may not realize that some of the options are not as healthy as they think.

For example, look at the nutritional difference between Burger King’s breakfast Impossible Croissan’wich and its traditional Sausage, Egg and Cheese Croissan’wich. The plant-based version is 491 calories while the regular sandwich comes in at 499 calories, which is a minimal difference. Both sandwiches shave similar amounts of fat, cholesterol, sodium and sugar. However, the fat content of the meat-free version is more than 40 percent of a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet suggested by the FDA, which brings into question its healthy status considered by some consumers.

Chefs and their culinary skills need to come into play to reduce the saturated fat, sodium and cholesterol typically found on menus.

Chef Barabra Kamp, MS, RDN, Program Director of the Culinary Medicine Specialist Board, wants to help cooks be a part of the multifaceted approach to the obesity problem associated with consumers eating away from home.

“I believe any trained chef that has the skillsets to make delicious food can help make a difference,” she suggested. “There are things we can do that are so simple that would make huge impacts (on making healthy food).”

For instance, Chef Kamp suggests ridding the kitchen of Base for making stocks and soups. “Base is so high in sodium,” she said. “Most commercial kitchens have a Combi oven. All they have to do is take the vegetable scraps and put them in a deep hotel pan and cook them overnight. In the morning you get a clear, delicious stock. It saves on labor costs and reduces food waste. If I could get chefs to do this one thing, it would make such a big difference.”

She also believes most consumers would not be concerned about foods containing less sodium, fat or calories if the food is still flavorful. She cited the FDA’s rule that required the removal of partially hydrogenated oils from any food beginning in June 2018. “Did it impact Frito Lay’s sales? I don’t think so,” she said.

Her goal is to help chefs get back to basics and create healthy flavorful menu items that will satisfy consumers’ requests for healthy and delicious food they eat when not at home.

Click here to read, “Health Meets Food in the Kitchen,” a Gold Medal Classroom story focusing on a new culinary medicine certificate program that trains chefs and culinary students to prepare food across a diverse range of nutritional needs.