Abstract
Although home cooking has been associated with a lower body mass index in a few studies, no data exists on the motives behind food dish choices during home meal preparation and on their association with overweight. This study aimed to evaluate this association in 50,003 participants from the NutriNet-Santé cohort. Dimensions underlying the importance of 27 criteria possibly influencing dish choices were determined using an exploratory factor analysis. The association between dish choice motives and overweight (including obesity) was estimated using logistic regression models adjusted for sociodemographic and lifestyle characteristics. Five dimensions of dishes choice motives emerged: healthy diet (e.g., “nutritional balance of the dish”), constraints (e.g., “my cooking skills”), pleasure (e.g., “originality of the dish”), specific diets (e.g., “my health status”), and organization (e.g., “what I planned to eat”). A negative association was observed between the healthy diet factor and being overweight (OR = 0.65 (95% CI (confidence interval): 0.62–0.67)), whereas a positive association appeared for factors regarding pleasure (OR = 1.14 (95% CI: 1.10–1.19)) and specific diets (OR = 1.19 (95% CI: 1.17–1.22)). No significant associations were observed for constraints and organization. The significant associations between dish choice motives and overweight suggested the interest of focusing on these motives in order to promote healthier food choices during home cooking.
Highlights
In 2013, more than one third of the world population was overweight or obese [1]
A total of 53,025 participants answered the questionnaire about dish choice motives
The healthy diet factor was negatively associated with overweight, and showed the strongest association while specific diet and pleasure factors were positively associated with overweight
Summary
In 2013, more than one third of the world population was overweight or obese [1]. Given the established health risk related to weight gain, obesity has become a global health challenge [2].In western societies, the modification of lifestyles, such as women’s increased role in the paid work force [3] and the expansion of available food options [4,5,6] resulted in the evolution of cooking practices [3,7,8], which may have influenced dietary behaviors [8,9,10,11] and weight status [11,12,13].Over the last few decades, the time devoted to home-meal preparation has strongly decreased [8]and people have more frequently turned towards relying food prepared away from home, including foods from restaurants, fast-food, take-out, delivery, or ready prepared meals. In 2013, more than one third of the world population was overweight or obese [1]. Given the established health risk related to weight gain, obesity has become a global health challenge [2]. People have more frequently turned towards relying food prepared away from home, including foods from restaurants, fast-food, take-out, delivery, or ready prepared meals. Compared with home prepared food, food prepared away from home tend to contain more total fat and saturated fat on a per-calorie basis [10,14,15], potentially explaining why a higher consumption of such foods has been linked with higher body mass index (BMI; calculated as kg/m2 ) [12,13,16].
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