Energy balance
Consuming home-cooked meals more than five times per week is associated with a lower likelihood of having an overweight BMI and excess body fat, independent of dietary quality improvements.
Eat home-cooked main meals more than five times a week. This habit is linked to a significantly lower likelihood of being overweight or having excess body fat, even when accounting for the nutritional quality of the food itself.
Those consuming home cooked meals more than five times, compared with less than three times per week, were 28% less likely to have overweight BMI (99% CI 8 to 43%), and 24% less likely to have excess percentage body fat (99% CI 5 to 40%).
Why this rating
Large cohort with objective measurements (DEXA for body fat, BMI) and robust adjustment for covariates, though cross-sectional design limits causal inference.
Source
Frequency of eating home cooked meals and potential benefits for diet and health: cross-sectional analysis of a population-based cohort study
Susanna Mills et al. · International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity · 2017
DOI 10.1186/s12966-017-0567-y
More from this paper
- Consuming home-cooked meals more than five times per week is associated with significantly higher diet quality (DASH and Mediterranean scores) and increased fruit and vegetable intake compared to consuming them less than three times per week.Good
- There is no significant association between the frequency of consuming home-cooked meals and markers of cholesterol, HbA1c, or hypertension after adjusting for sociodemographic and dietary covariates.Good
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