The Get With The Program! Guide to Fast Food and Family Restaurants

Introduction

I've always loved eating in restaurants: I take great pleasure in the artful cooking (and sometimes even the not-so-artful cooking) of others. But to be honest, in recent years I've eaten out more than I'd really like to. Because I travel so much, dining out is often more a matter of necessity than of choice, making me feel somewhat like a prisoner of someone else's menu. There's no doubt that it's harder to eat healthfully at restaurants than at home; you have less control over the choices available and how food is prepared, and it's harder to tell if what you think you're eating is what you're really eating -- and harder to put the brakes on temptation.

But, if you approach dining out with the same amount of knowledge and commitment you bring to eating at home, there's no reason you can't eat out and stay on the program, whether you go to restaurants once, twice, thrice, or many more times a week.

This is even more true today than it was just a short while ago. All the traveling I've done over the past few years has given me the opportunity to sample restaurants in almost every nook and cranny of the country, and I think I can say with some authority that the state of restaurant food is improving. The management of many eateries, from four-star dining rooms to fast-food joints, seems to have heard the cry for more healthful entrees -- and they're delivering. Restaurants, after all, are businesses, and many health-conscious people have dollars to spend. I'm sure that there are some restaurateurs out there who have changed their menus because they have a social conscience (and probably like to eat nutritious food themselves), but, for the most part, the bottom line being the bottom line in business, it's our dollars that are driving the market.

Just a few years ago, healthy restaurant fare wasn't particularly marketable. Some places tried putting a few nutritious options onto their menus but no one bought them. Now, though, people are responding to these healthier choices, partly, I think, because restaurant chefs have learned to make them much more palatable. For example, at the time of this writing, McDonald's had recorded a significant jump in overall sales that analysts attributed to the introduction of a line of salads called Premium Salads. Wendy's and Jack in the Box have also introduced new and improved salads of their own. Many chains are putting considerable energy into getting across the news that fast-food restaurants now offer healthier choices. I know this firsthand because (in the interest of full disclosure) I have even been hired as a consultant to help McDonald's with its healthy lifestyles public awareness campaign.