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.