Association between having meals not home prepared and stomach or intestinal illness: findings from the 2011 to 2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)

With food industry developing so fast around the world and food delivery becomes popular among young adults, people today tend to have meals that are not prepared at home. However, it reminds people to rethink about their body health especially gastric health. In this case, we decided to find out the association between the frequency of having meals not home prepared and the risk of having stomach or intestinal illness. We assumed that people who had meals away from home would be more likely to suffer from gastric diseases. 19,293 adults over twenty years old participated in diet and health questionnaires according to NHANES database from 2011 to 2018. Multivariable regression was used to measure the association between the frequency of having meals out and the risk of having gastric diseases by using Empower Stats. According to the p values and odds ratio values given by Empower Stats, no significant association between the exposure variable and the outcome variable was found. Thus, we drew a conclusion that there was no association between the frequency of eating out and the risk of having gastric diseases.