Food and Health Fact #70

Fact #70: Regulation, risk factors, and restaurant food

By Matthew Rees

Food and Health Fact #70: Regulation, risk factors, and restaurant food

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This week's "food for thought" excerpt comes from A Big Fat Crisis (2014), by Deborah A. Cohen, MD.

"Our health departments devote considerable effort to preventing food-borne infectious diseases [in restaurants], but they do next to nothing to prevent diet-related chronic diseases, which are far more prevalent and cost considerably more of our health dollars. The magnitude of the risk from a poor diet is not well appreciated. For example, the increased risk of getting lung cancer from exposure to secondhand smoke as the result of living with a smoker is estimated be between 13 and 47 percent, which is about the same increased risk we face of getting colon cancer by eating red meat every day. We have regulations that ban smoking in restaurants, but not a single warning to help people reduce the consumption of red meat, much less reduce the gargantuan portion sizes that steakhouses and BBQ restaurants typically serve."

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