--- title: Study Finds Food Trucks Sell Safer Food Than Than Restaurants description: Grabbing your lunch from a food truck may be a safer option than sitting down at a restaurant, according to a new study. canonical: https://time.com/2901080/food-trucks-safer-than-restaurants/ author: Aleksandra Gjorgievska article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-06-19T16:25:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:01:13.480Z article:section: Health og:title: Study Finds Food Trucks Sell Safer Food Than Than Restaurants og:description: Grabbing your lunch from a food truck may be a safer option than sitting down at a restaurant, according to a new study. og:url: https://time.com/2901080/food-trucks-safer-than-restaurants/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc404810d54235f8f/69869863d0b6f22062304edc/food-truck1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4000 og:image:height: 2250 og:image:alt: Food trucks gather at Nathan Phillips Square og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Study Finds Food Trucks Sell Safer Food Than Than Restaurants twitter:description: Grabbing your lunch from a food truck may be a safer option than sitting down at a restaurant, according to a new study. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc404810d54235f8f/69869863d0b6f22062304edc/food-truck1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Study: Food Trucks May Be Safer Than Restaurants > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. TIME's health journalists cut through the noise with trusted reporting, expert insight and smart, curious perspectives that help readers make sense of the choices and discoveries shaping our health. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: The Truth About Fat [Watch (HLS stream): The Truth About Fat](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uYGhfNfS.m3u8) (5:15)  _Published 2014-06-12. When you want to lose weight or get healthy, what is the first thing you would normally cut from your diet? If you said fat, you're not alone_ by [Aleksandra Gjorgievska](https://time.com/author/aleksandra-gjorgievska/) ## Aleksandra Gjorgievska Jun 19, 2014 4:25 PM UTC  Food trucks gather at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto on April 2, 2014. Food trucks gather at Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto on April 2, 2014. Andrew Francis —Toronto Star/Getty Images by [Aleksandra Gjorgievska](https://time.com/author/aleksandra-gjorgievska/) ## Aleksandra Gjorgievska Jun 19, 2014 4:25 PM UTC Grabbing your lunch from a food truck may be a safer option than sitting down at a restaurant, according to a new study. After examining over 260,000 food inspection reports, researchers from a public law interest firm in Virginia [found](https://www.ij.org/street-eats-safe-eats) that in each of the seven examined cities—Boston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Louisville, Miami, Seattle and Washington, D.C.—food trucks performed better than or as well as restaurants. In every city except Seattle, food trucks averaged fewer sanitation violations than restaurants. In Seattle, the number of violations for food trucks was also lower but was not statistically significant, which means that food trucks and restaurants performed approximately the same. The study, called “Street Eats, Safe Eats,” looked at cities where food trucks and restaurants are obliged to follow the same health guidelines. _“Street Eats, Safe Eats_ finds that in every city examined … food trucks and carts did as well as or better than restaurants,” the study says. “The results suggest that the notion that street food is unsafe is a myth.” According to the firm, called Institute for Justice, routine inspections have been key in limiting the number of health violations among food trucks. The study discourages an implementation of stricter regulations for mobile vendors, such as limiting the time and places where food trucks may work, arguing that such rules do not make street food safer. [Vox suggests](http://www.vox.com/2014/6/16/5812630/food-trucks-are-safer-than-restaurants) that the reason for the researchers’ findings may be that food trucks run smaller, more easily manageable kitchens than restaurants. In addition, the growing popularity of food trucks may be causing increased scrutiny of the way they make food, which in turn would lead to a favorable outcome for them, Vox says. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] There's something we all enjoy about staying for dinner. You ever thought why? What was on your dinner table when you were younger? Chances are it had a lot to do with, what your doctor was telling you is healthy. Building a strong healthy body is like building a strong, beautiful building. If the foundation is weak, the whole building will be weak. It takes five fingers to point the way to healthful eating habits. Well, here we go. For years, the government published dietary guidelines. Meant to keep Americans healthy. There's a great deal to learn. Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are. The body needs certain substances to live and grow. And remember, your body isn't just like an automobile. For years, the key measures of those guidelines were the same, cut fat from your diet. The committee's original report urged Americans to reduce their risk of heart attack. By reducing their intake of cholesterol down to the equivalent of about one egg a day. And those guidelines had an effect. From 1977 to 2012, per capita consumption of eggs fell by 9 %, beef by 37 %, whole milk by 72 %. Calories from saturated fat fell, while calories from supposedly safe carbohydrates increased. As one expert put it, it was a vast nutritional experiment. With nearly a million American's a year dropping dead from heart disease in the mid 80s, we had to try something. Nearly four decades later results are in. The experiment was a failure. Americans are sicker than they've ever been before. The prevalence of diabetes has gone up 157 % from 1980 to 2011. Nearly one in ten Americans now has the disease. Causing the public health system $ 245 billion a year. Heart disease is still the number one killer in the country. Americans are as obese as ever. So, what went wrong? Good old granola. Great for taste but loaded with fat. It doesn't take much of imagine a leap to assume that fat would make us fat, clog our arteries and raise the risk of heart disease. It turns out that saturated fat is a lot more complicated than we think. Carbohydrates and fats are nutrients. Like man, you need nutrients to live and grow. [ MUSIC ] Firstly, there are two kinds of cholesterol. LDL which is linked to heart disease and HDL which can be protective. Fats that course through the blood are known as triglycerides and high levels of those are linked to heart disease. Saturated fat raises LDL cholesterol but also raises HDL. Moving LDL buildup on arterial walls. So raising both, makes saturated fat a cardio wash. One key piece of information is that LDL seems to come in two forms. Large and fluffy, small and dense. Those smaller particles are linked to heart disease, while the larger ones are mostly benign. Saturated fat increases the number of large particles. The opposite happens with carbs. I don't get it. Researchers have long since discovered the kind of fats found in olives and in fish like salmon. Are actually heart protective. Now it turns out the fats found in meat and dairy, aren't as bad as we feared before. So that means by focusing so much on fats. We may actually have been making ourselves sicker. So, she brings up the subject of reduced- fat cheese. It's a fat- free [ UNKNOWN ]. Fat- free, cholesterol free. Low- fat granola. Reduced- fat Kettle chips. Reduced- fat Chips Ahoy. Lowfat cottage cheese. Non- fat yogurt is the perfect example. The thinking for consumers was simple. Fat was dangerous. This product had no fat. Therefore, it must be healthy. It's non- fat, which means less calories. [ MUSIC ] But amid the confusion about fat, we end up replacing it in our diets with sugars and carbohydrates, which meant our calorie intake was actually going up. When carbs and things like corn and white bread are ingested into your body, their converted into sugars. Those sugars convert to insulin cuz it's fat cells go into storage overdrive, leading to weight gain. Since fewer calories are then left to fill the body, you begin to feel hungry it means our metabolism begins to slow down in effort to save energy, we eat more and we gain more weight, never quite feeling full. As this process repeats, our cells become more resistant to insulin, which causes us to gain more weight, which increases insulin resistance in a vicious circle. Cut calories, and people just get hungrier. Obesity, diabetes, high triglycerides and low HDL cholesterol can all follow. Study after study has found it's very difficult to lose weight on a very low- fat diet. Possibly because fat and meat can produce a sense of satiety, that's hard to achieve with carbs, making it easier to simply stop eating. But it isn't just the increase in carbs that affects us. These processed, low saturated fat alternatives, come loaded with sugars, salt, preservatives, and even some unhealthy fats. So what's the real alternative? As one extra puts it, the cold hard truth about diet is that the only way to eat well, is to eat well. You'll be happier and you'll be healthier, if you focus on real whole foods, whether they have fat or not. Got it. 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