Healthy Restaurant Eating

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My fiancee subscribes to Self magazine. Occasionally, when she’s not looking, I grab it and read through a little bit to see what tips I can find. While I’m waiting for my Men’s Health subscription, it’s the best I can do. I picked the March issue of this year and on page 182 there’s an article on healthy takeout. I’ll break the suggestions down for you.

Chinese – The key here is to dilute the bad foods (General Tso’s Chicken, Sweet & Sour Chicken, etc.) with steamed vegetables and brown rice. It’s a pretty sensible solution. Bonus tip – use chopsticks and you’ll eat slower.
Diner – Avoid foods with mayo (pretty much a great idea across the board) and fat heavy dressings (blue cheese for instance). Bonus tip – get extra veggies and less meat. This is like the Chinese food example of diluting bad foods with good ones.
Italian – Get pizza with half the cheese, extra sauce and blot the oil off the cheese. I added the extra sauce in, but I’ve read this suggestion a hundred times. Caesar salad – their suggestion is to order a completely different salad – not the most helpful of tips. Bonus tip – order dishes with tomato sauces rather than cream-based sauces. That’s actually a good tip in my opinion
Mexican – Don’t use the sour cream with chicken fajitas and go light on the guacamole. I’m fine with guacamole as it’s most good fat. Bonus tip – request black beans instead of refried beans. It’s a good bonus tip, but I prefer pinto beans to black beans – most Mexican places have them and are happy to make that substitution as well.
Japanese – Though they had some suggestions here, all the foods seemed to be much healthier than the above. I say enjoy more or less whatever you want.

Overall the big takeaway from this seems to be this: white sauces are evil. Almost all the things above are about limit mayo, creamy salad dressings, sour cream, cream sauces, etc. The other thing to limit is cheese.

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