Keep Your Family Healthy When Eating Out

So there we were, three generations of family and friends all squished up against each other, sardine-style, perusing the vast menu at one of the country’s better-known chain restaurants. My friend sighed- she’s highly compelling when she sighs, then sighed some more, then put down her reading glasses, slammed the menu down on the table and pronounced:

“I give up! What the heck can you eat here that’s good for you?”

I’m telling you, my friend is just smashing when she’s annoyed, and this menu really annoyed her. It was a veritable Trans Fat-fest. As Dorothy Parker once famously quipped of Katherine Hepburn’s stage talent, the quality here ran “the gamut…from A to B.”

My friend had chosen this place “for the children,” a passel of picky eaters ages two to 17, but she was starting to worry about the health habits the older ones were picking up.

“I mean, seriously, we eat out too often to ingest this stuff. You eat out all the time, Holly. What do you do to stay healthy and fit?”

She was referring to my old job: I used to be a roving radio reporter for a national news organization. I traveled at the drop of a hat, constantly, and was thus ever having to eat out. That might sound fun, but after a few weeks, it usually means weight gain, lethargy and bad skin. Thank goodness I did radio.

But here’s the cool part: I figured out how to eat well at restaurants. o despite all my galavanting, I was able to kept my energy levels up and my health pristine. And those 40 pounds that I’d lost years earlier? They stayed well at bay. Score! Now back to our story:

“Fess up,” my friend said, grabbing what she affectionately referred to as her “pooch.”

“How do you pick a good place, and how do you pick the healthiest options?”

I told her that she was nuts, and that only pooch she possessed slobbered and barked and was named Pooch-ini. However, the chance to hold forth proved irresistible. Here is what I told her:

Guideline Numero Uno: Making healthy choices when dining out starts with the kind of restaurant you choose.

Here’s a wee secret: chain restaurants, in general, do not place “Minding Your Health” at the top of their To Do lists.

They want return business, and, as fast food’s enduring phenomenon has proven, return business requires the following: fat, salt, and sugar. These are the primal tastes we crave, and these chains know that there are some very cheap ways to satisfy those cravings. This works out nicely for them, because high profits require cheap ingredients that can be quickly nuked and plated. Unfortunately, this does not work out so well for our bodies.

So. To recap: as a rule of thumb, the cheaper your meal, the cheaper the quality of the food.

Cheaper-quality food can mean many things, but in general, it indicates that:

• the meat was likely raised on a ‘factory farm’ and fed low-quality feed that might include anything from ground-up animal parts to genetically modified corn;
• the animals were likely given growth hormones and/or antibiotics;
• the fish is likely not sustainably sourced and, just like the meat, could very well be hormone happy from being farm-raised in poor conditions;
• the vegetables are likely not organic and could be from anywhere: Mexico, Chile, China
• the dairy likely comes from cows have been given growth hormones;
• the dishes themselves are likely partially or wholly pre-packaged and mass-produced (“to ensure consistency and efficiency”);
• the fats that your meals are cooked in are likely of low-quality and could contain Trans Fats.

“Man!” my friend declared. “That’s enough to make you never want to eat out again!”

Indeed. Except, there’s some good news:

I assured my friend that there are plenty of restaurants out there that serve high-quality food; in fact, I wrote a guidebook about them, and that eating lower-quality food every once in a while is not a terrible transgression.

“Really?”

Really. Even the famously fit surfer Laird Hamilton says he doesn’t sweat it if he has to chow down on fast food or on an airplane meal every now and again. Phew! If it’s OK for Laird - have you seen that body? - then it’s OK for me. But let us remember that this is Laird’s exception, not his rule. So if you and your family eat out more than once a month, it behooves you to try and “up” the quality of your restaurant.

Ways to Diagnose a Restaurant as Having High-Quality Food

Surprisingly, it’s not a matter of price. There are a lot of great restaurants out there serving local vegetables, grass-fed or organic beef and other excellent ingredients that, believe it or not, are not going to break the bank. Of course, there are also a lot of restaurants that will cost you a pretty penny (or even a not-so-pretty Ben Franklin), but even those places often offer prix-fixe lunch menus or other specials to keep you coming in.

Either way, if you’re going to spend the money to go out, and you’re going out often and are serious about your family’s health, it’s good to use this little checklist to diagnose your restaurant. Find out:

• Where their produce comes from. Most major cities have farmer’s markets and regional farmers who will sell their fruits and veggies wholesale to area chefs. Find out if your chosen chef frequents those farms. If he is into fresh produce, then he’s likely into overall quality as well.

• Where their meat comes from. This one’s a little trickier, as availability can change with the seasons even more often than veggies, but even if there’s only one dish on the menu that uses organic or pastured meat (such as grass-fed beef or free-range farm chickens), then you’ll know that this is a place you can frequent with joy and ease.

• About their overall food philosophy, or what I like to call “foodosophy”: Do they rely heavily on foodless foods? Meaning, are they into pre-packaged, highly-processed mixes or canned products that will expire when your grandson starts wearing dentures? Or, do they do the hard work of procuring fresh and unprocessed ingredients? Most restaurants have web sites, and if the chef is serious about quality food, she will make sure you know about it. She will write about it, blog about it and sing about it. In stereo. Find her and embrace her.

Once you’ve diagnosed a restaurant as being a good egg, so to speak, start going there. Become a regular. Tip decently. They’ll then treat you as if you were family, and they’ll make sure your family has what they want. Your daughter only eats chicken? No problem! They’ll make sure to have a splendid piccata ready just for her. Your toddler has just discovered the joy of freshly mashed spring peas? Come April, he’ll be licking his bowl with joy. You’ll be able to consider the place a delicious home away from home.

But What if You Have to Eat at a Lower Quality Place?

Sometimes budgetary or geographic constraints mean you’re going to have to eat somewhere that’s not the best choice. That’s OK. There are tricks you can use to eat well in these places, too.

• Choose the items that are lowest on the food chain. In general, the higher up the food chain you go, the more the concentrated the pesticides tend to be. Vegetables, salad and whole grains (such as rice) are great choices. For breakfast, Starbucks has morning oatmeal, and many of the fast-food behemoths offer yogurt and fruit.

• Try to avoid the meat, but if you can’t, go for the fish. Preferably herbivores like tilapia as opposed to huge, mercury-laden tuna. The smaller and younger the animal, the less time and space for additives to do their thing. Download a pocket guide from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It will help you make smart seafood choices that don’t harm our children’s oceans.

• One exception to the general rule of fast food=bad is Chipotle. The location in Charlottesville, VA uses pork exclusively from Joel Salatin, who is perhaps the most celebrated farmer in America. If you’ve read Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma or have seen the documentary film Food, Inc., you’ll know why Salatin is so beloved: he does things the traditional way. He allows his pigs to roam freely, feeds his cows grass and lets his chickens scratch around and eat bugs and other grubs that turn their yolks bright orange and make their white stand up like boobs in the pan.

Yes, really.

Chipotle tries to source local, well-raised foods in its other locations, too, so if you’re going to do fast food, that’s the place I’d choose. Panera also has a children’s menu featuring organic mac-n-cheese. Is fast food something you’re going to want your kids to eat every day? Likely not. But there are good choices, better choices and best choices, and I’d say these two chains will do you fine every once in a while.

• At a Mexican place? A bean burrito with salad works well. Italian? Vegetable soup & pasta. Done. American-style chain? Go for steamed veggies and rice with lemon or some soy sauce; that works well at Asian places, too. Get the pizza without the meat, and, if you can stand it, without the cheese. (Have them add lots of veggies and tomato sauce instead.)

• What about kids’ meals? If they’re good eaters, try to focus on filling them up with veggies and rice. Most places offer broccoli, but if your kids won’t eat that, go for the mac-and-cheese or other vegetarian options. If the wee ones absolutely have to have the chicken fingers or the shrimp, be like Laird: don’t sweat it.

And if your kids are older, encourage them to make smart choices that fuel their bodies right. Tell them bad food will give them zits, and that they’ll end up having to do radio. That usually does the trick.

Holly Hickman hosts HollyHickman.com and is the author of Healthy Eats Here! The National Guide to Local Restaurants Serving Organic, Grassfed and/or Seasonal Foods.