The Impact of Food Away From Home on Adult Diet Quality by
Jessica Todd , Lisa Mancino , and Biing-Hwan Lin Economic
Research Report No. (ERR-90) 24 pp, February 2010 Food away from
home (FAFH) has been associated with poor diet quality in many
studies. It is difficult, however, to measure the effect of FAFH
on diet quality since many unobserved factors, such as food
preferences and time constraints, influence not just our choice
of where to eat but also the nutritional quality of what we eat.
Using data from 1994-96 and 2003-04, this study applies fixed-
effects estimation to control for such unobservable influences
and finds that, for the average adult, FAFH increases daily
caloric intake and reduces diet quality. The effects vary
depending on which meals are consumed away from home. On
average, breakfast away from home decreases the number of
servings of whole grains and dairy consumed per 1,000 calories
and increases the percent of calories from saturated and solid
fat, alcohol, and added sugar (SoFAAS) in