Do you make use of your Choices in Healthy Fast Food

Fast food has deep associations with the way we live in this country. Look around you as you drive, and  quite often, you see people driving their cars with one hand and unwrapping a burger or something with the other. We're always tempted by all kinds of fast food offerings driving back home after work each day, and often, we succumb to temptation. For a country that drives for a large part of the day, what we need is food that is easy to eat as fast food is, and is healthy nonetheless. What we need is healthy fast food. How many fast food chains are there that are actually trying to move you towards health? This isn't an article that tries to bash fast food chains for being socially irresponsible. It's an article about who's actually stepping up and making a change. If you look in the right places, there are quite a few great restaurant chains offering wonderful healthy Mexican, Asian  or Mediterranean fast food - great soups, wholesome salads, delicious but healthy desserts and whole grain staples.

Let's look at a few of the best examples of being responsible with fast food - healthy nutrition, no unhealthy fats, low levels of salt, organic ingredients and nutritional information that's easy to read. And would you believe it, McDonald's happens to be among the healthiest fast food chains in the country - one of the top 10.

Take the healthy fast food chain, Panera Bread. This bakery-based fast food chain offers all kinds of whole wheat bread choices to make your sandwiches out of, the chips that go along with the sandwiches are baked ones, and you can choose fresh fruit to eat with your sandwiches. Noodles & Company doesn't take noodles and turn them into greasy mall food. To begin with, the grease they use is healthy soy oil. You can choose from among American noodles, Asian noodles or Mediterranean noodles; and once you do, can pick hormone- and antibiotic-free meat and organic tofu. Add to it a healthy helpings of broccoli, mushrooms sprouts and other veggies, and you have healthy fast food like nowhere else. The kind of stuff you would probably make yourself at home. The great part is, the you aren't forced to pick a large bowl of noodles; there are choices for those who like portion control to. Even their desserts are unconventional and healthy - like the Rice Krispy Treat. The restaurant has a couple of hundred locations in the midwest, the South and the West.

And finally, the one that you've been waiting for - McDonald's. This restaurant chain with thousands of locations all of the country offers healthy fast food in all kinds of ways. Your Happy Meal for instance offers you a choice of an apple dipper instead of the usual fries, and you can pick fruit juice instead of soda. As for the fries, McDonald's has switched to using canola oil. Their Grilled Chicken Classic offers a great filling and healthy way to start your day and the Egg McMuffin is a great low-calorie choice too.

Of course, the restaurant chain offers you (very famously) many more tempting ways to increase your waist size too. It is all up to you how you make use of the choices available to you.

Looking for Healthy Food to Eat at a Fast Food Chain?

Perhaps it is the Super-Size Me effect. When you go to any one of the 14,000-plus McDonald's locations across the country, more and more, you begin to notice that they offer healthy food to eat in addition to their usually sinful offerings. Your Happy Meals can come with low-fat milk or fruit juice, and not a Coke; you can get apple dippers instead of french fries. And even if your child does choose those fried potato strips instead of the apple dippers, McDonald's fries them in canola oil. Their salads with Paul Newman's Balsamic Vinaigrette and their  low-calorie Egg McMuffin are all great alternatives to their regular delicious, but unhealthy menu offerings. McDonald's isn't the only fast food chain offering healthy food to eat. There are dozens of others across the country.

Consider Einstein Bros., the bagel-serving chain that works out of 700 locations around the country. What exactly is healthy about a bagel, with its butter and high levels of carbohydrates, you ask? At Einstein's you can opt for reduced-fat peanut butter or hummus. You also get bagels that are made out of whole-grain flour and you get to pick a vegan bagel if you want. If you really like bagels, there's a good chance you'll like baked goods, too. While bakeries usually aren't places you go to for healthy, responsible food (these are places where you can choose cheese danishes or sticky buns and have yourself a good sticky time), at one of the thousand or so Panera Bread locations across the country, you get to choose really healthy food to eat. Any sandwich you ask for at Panera Bread comes with a whole-grain option. Any item on the menu that you order can come in half-size as well as the regular full-size, and your chips can come baked, if you so choose. For children, you can order antibiotic- and hormone-free chicken, all-natural peanut butter and organic yogurt. If you are looking for healthy food to eat at a fast food chain, try their Turkey artichoke on focaccia bread. It's pretty great.

When it comes to finding healthy food to eat at a major fast food chain, Au Bon Pain can be hard to beat. Unlike the other healthy fast food chains in this article, Au Bon Pai, with its 300 locations across the country came into business with a specific intention of offering healthy fast food. Their sandwiches, entrées, salads and soups are all made of whole grains, organic meats and vegetables. If you're trying to control your weight, try their special Portions menu that (as you can probably tell), offers small-sized portions. The menu offers you 14 different nutritious items from fruit salads to regular salads - and they all weigh in at under 200 calories. And they provide computers at every outlet to help you calculate the nutritional value of what you order.  Except for their high sodium menus, Au Bon Pain can be a real winner.

Inventive Cheap Healthy Food

"Turning Second-Class Ingredients into a First-Class Meal"

The statistics may be telling us that we in this country are winning the battle against unemployment - that it's lower at 9% than it's been at any time over the past year. But factor in people who are employed only part of the time and so on, and the figure jumps to about twice that. All of which takes us to one unavoidable conclusion - we need to learn how to do a lot more with money we have. Certainly, we've been told (ad nauseum) that it doesn't make any sense to spend money on eating out or on Starbucks lattes (and we get the point already). But that isn't quite enough to help us handle the kind of drop in income and rise in food prices that we've come to experience. If cheap healthy food is what you need to provide your family with so that you can survive and save a little money for an unexpected need, what kind of food do you turn to?

The answer to that would be the kind of food traditional societies in Europe, South America and Asia have always turned to, wealthy or no. They call it peasant cuisine. If that doesn't sound entirely appetizing, it absolutely will, as soon as you take a look at the recipes behind the dishes. These recipes weren’t developed for economic hardship. These kinds of recipes come from countries that are quite developed and well-to-do. If they are sparing in their use of neat for heavy dairy products and if they are high in starch it's because those cultures have discovered how healthful cooking in this way can be - and especially when you learn to use spices the way they have, they can be tasty too. These are cultures that have learned to knock together cheap healthy food with mindbendingly delicious flavors drawn from an exciting and adventurous use of spices. This isn't to push something with hyperbole - you'd agree too - the tangy pasta recipes of Italy, the paella recipes of Spain, and frankfurters from Germany are all examples of how inventive use of cooking technique and spice can turn what would otherwise be a second-class cut of meat into a first-class recipe.

Do you feel that you need an extra dash of salt to add more flavor to a meal? That wouldn't be the healthy way to do it. Instead, try rice vinegar or red wine vinegar or Apple cider vinegar. It'll bring exciting new notes of flavor to your meal that salt just couldn't. Try experimenting with spices like ginger, garlic, rosemary. Not only did these have great health benefits, they make food infinitely more appetizing and imaginative.

Do you marvel at how the Japanese recipes involve slices of meat so thin, they are almost transparent? They didn't learn to do that for their fascination of delicately sliced meat. They had to make do with what they had to make it go farther. As it would turn out, methods like this make for cheap, healthy food. You get less meat in your diet, you save money, and it's healthy.

It could be a new trend in responsible eating, choosing traditional recipes from all around the world. Traditional recipes tend to usually be healthy - because they were designed for times when rich food was just not this easily  available.

Finding Healthy Fast Food

If you love to go through a drive thru after a hard day at work to get dinner, you are not alone. Many people are so busy with kids, careers, and the rigors of running a household that they have no energy to cook a decent meal most nights of the week. Instead of feeding yourself and your family fast food that contributes to high sodium levels, fatigue, and weight gain, think about healthier options. You can find healthy fast food options today when a burger and fries just does not cut it any longer.

You can find healthier options at your favorite fast food restaurant, or you can do with some of the newer places that have better options for the entire menu. Healthy fast food is not a figment of your imagination any longer. You can go to your favorite burger place and you can find salads and fruit options that you and your family are going to love. Just watch the dressings and extras, as they can add a lot of extra calories that you may not count when eating a salad. A roasted chicken sandwich can be good, just toss the bread.

There are also healthy fast food options for your children. The meals they get are often more about the toy than good nutrition. Some places now offer apple sticks, oranges, and other fruit sides that they can get rather than getting fries. You can also skip the kid's menu and get them healthy adult options that they are going to like. You will have to help them with good choices at first, but you may be surprised to see that they make better choices on their own soon enough. Remember, a steamed baked potato is far healthier than fries, but tastes just as good.

If you want more choices, there are different ways to find healthy fast food. You can go to many chains that offer subs with a healthy twist. You can get whatever you want on them so that you know exactly what you are eating. You can also find this option in other stores that sell food locally that are not national chains. They are quick, easy, and better for everyone. Keep your eyes open for newer and more exciting healthy fast food choices. New options are coming your way. Also remember that many restaurants now have a service that allows you to order just about anything they make for pickup. This is better than drive thru, but nearly as quick.

Healthy fast food is not always around when you need it. There are some nutritionists that say you should never eat it if you want to stay healthy. If you have a reasonably healthy lifestyle with good wight control, it probably will not hurt you once in a while to have that burger and fries. Just remember that having it once in a while is a lot different than becoming a regular. If you are struggling with time and convenience, look up tools for cooking healthy meals quickly at home. That may put a stop to your daily stops for food that cannot be good for you.