Can Dining out Too Often be Bad For Your Heart?

Can Dining out Too Often be Bad For Your Heart?

Looking forward to finally heading out to that hot new restaurant in town tonight? Well, you might want keep those utensils down for now as eating out too much may be hurting your health.

Dining out can increase the risk of developing high blood pressure, especially if you’re younger, according to a recent study published in the American Journal of Hypertension

For the study, researchers looked at over 500 university students and discovered that even one additional meal eaten away from home was linked with more than a 5 percent increase in the risk of having prehypertension.

As far as how often the participants were eating away from home, it was shown that as many as 38 percent of the students ate at least 12 meals/half of their weekly meals away from home.

The researchers attributed this to the fact that meals that are eaten when dining out can often contain more calories, saturated fat and salt compared to food that is cooked at home.

Hypertension (high blood pressure) is a common condition in which the force of the blood against your artery walls is high enough that it may eventually cause health problems, such as heart disease. Uncontrolled high blood pressure increases your risk of serious health problems, including heart attack and stroke.

Photo credit: djile/Shutterstock

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