Restaurant meals pack kilojoule punch

A single meal at a North American restaurant may contain more than half the kilojoules the average person needs for the whole day, according to research published in a leading US medical journal.

Researchers from the University of Toronto sampled hundreds of meals at 19 chain sit-down restaurants and found that average breakfast, lunch and dinner meals contained 4737 kilojoules, or 56% of the daily 8400 kilojoules recommendation.

They also contained loads of salt - 2 269 milligrams or 151% of the recommended amount for most adults, which is 1 500 milligrams per day - and 89% of the daily value for fat.

Meals containing saturated fat

The meals contained on average 83% of the daily value for saturated fat, and more than 60% of the daily value for cholesterol.

"Overall, the results of this study demonstrate that calorie, fat, saturated fat and sodium levels are alarmingly high," said the research letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"Therefore, addressing the profile of restaurant meals should be a major public health priority."

A second study in JAMA focused on dishes available at 33 small independent and small chain restaurants in the Boston area, and found that the average meal contained two-thirds of daily kilojoule requirements.

Samples were taken from Mexican, American, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Thai, Indian, Greek and Vietnamese restaurants.

Average kilojoules in meals

"On average, the meals studied contained 5573 kilojoules, which significantly exceeds the estimated energy needs of an individual adult at a single meal," said senior author Susan Roberts.

"Meals from all restaurant types provided substantially more energy than is needed for weight maintenance," said Roberts, director of the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.

Italian meals had the highest average kilojoules per meal (7371), followed by American (6274 kilojoules) and Chinese (6190 kilojoules).

Vietnamese meals had the fewest kilojoules on average (3872), and Japanese meals had the second lowest (4313).