Nutritional quality analysis of green salad served at selected restaurants

Abstract

Introduction: Food quality seems to be accepted as a fundamental component to satisfy restaurant customers; however, it has been often overlooked in restaurant service quality and satisfaction studies. Eating out at restaurants often means eating foods that are fat and calorie bombs due to the large portion sizes and unhealthy cooking methods. Restaurant foods contain lots of calories, sugar, sodium and unhealthy fats hence they increase the risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. Increased health risks are directly associated with increased consumption of restaurant foods. This food however generally lacks in certain essential nutrients like proteins, vitamins and minerals thus causing greater imbalance.Objectives: The study was carried out with the following objectives:• To calculate the proximate composition of green salad served at selected restaurants• To evaluate the nutritional adequacy of green salad served theretoMethodology: The green salad samples were procured from private, public and fast food restaurants in a sterile ice box. Development of the standardized recipe and proximate composition analysis were performed to evaluate energy, carbohydrate, protein, fats, fibre, ash and moisture content. The proximate values were calculated in triplicate. The mean scores of the triplicates and standard deviation were calculated using SPSS 16.0 version.Results and Conclusion: The results indicated that green salad served at all three types of restaurants was found to be higher in fat content ranging from 200 to 800 per cent with reference to the standardized recipe. It was noted that green salad of private restaurants (R1) was having slightly higher amount of energy (8 per cent) and fibre content (13 per cent) but whereas that served in public restaurants (R2) ranked lower in energy (-10 per cent), carbohydrate (-5 per cent), protein (-90 per cent) and fibre (6 per cent) content as compared to the standardized recipe. Fast food restaurants (R3) however served green salad with lower carbohydrate (-10 per cent) and protein (-96 per cent) content.