Fast Food Consumption and Body Mass Index

Abstract

Fast food consumption has been considered a major cause of obesity all over the world. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between the average frequencies of eating a meal from a fast-food restaurant per week and Body Mass Index (BMI). Our analysis based on a nationwide survey of Americans indicates that a meal from a fast food restaurant per week, on an average, is associated with an increase of BMI of 0.16 or 0.17 after adjusting for race, gender, education, marital status, age and income. However, our analysis does not find a similar effect for meals eaten from any other restaurant. Our analysis also finds that the higher is a person’s BMI, the more importance a person assigns to the cause of his obesity being the kinds of foods marketed in restaurants and grocery stores.