Healthy Fast Foods

Even when junk food purveyors claim to be providing healthy fast foods, their offerings tend to be high - sometimes sky high - in fats, sugar and salt.

Try hard to cut down on the number of times in a week or month that you eat fast food. This kind of food is addictive, and the more you eat it, the more you'll crave it. If you cut down on salty, fatty foods, and substitute fresh, unprocessed foods, gradually you'll lose your taste for junk food.

Meanwhile, here's our checklist of how to choose relatively healthy fast foods.

Choosing Healthy Fast Foods: Reading The Menu

• Select foods that are grilled, not fried.
• Avoid deep fried foods and any that are battered or have crumb coatings.
• Avoid supersizes. Even 'Regular' can be enormous. Always select the smallest sized portion available. Share a serving between two (or more) people, as another way to reduce the amount you eat.
• Don't be seduced by an 'all you can eat' deal. You'll simply be encouraged to overeat.
• Read the junk food menu with an eagle eye. Words like 'crispy' and 'crunchy' mean 'deep-fried' and 'fatty'.

Choosing Healthy Fast Foods: Make Wise Choices

• Choose baked potato rather than fries and don't fill it up with butter and cheese.
• Don't add extra cheese to burgers or chips.
• Avoid fatty side dishes like garlic or cheese bread.
• Pastry is very fatty, especially if it's flaky. Avoid sausage rolls, quiches etc.
• Grabbing a sandwich? Choose one that doesn't have a lot of mayo, or extra layers, and look for low-fat fillings like cottage cheese, tuna and prawns, rather than cheese or bacon. Don't accompany it with crisps, chips, potato skins.
• Instead of a soft drink and pack of potato chips, have water, fruit juice or low fat milk and a piece of fresh fruit or low fat yogurt.
• Salads sound like a healthy choice, but beware fatty, sweetened dressings and ingredients like croutons and crispy bacon that are salty and calorie-laden. Potato and pasta salads are often thickly dressed and are very heavy on carbs. Ask for low fat dressing, or no dressing at all.
• At the salad bar, steer clear of salads with dressing, go for fresh veg, sliced roast meats and poultry (not processed high salt/fat meats like salami, pastrami), vegetables without sauces. Use a small plate.
• Start your meal with a vegetable-based, non-creamy soup - it will help you eat less at the rest of the meal.

Choosing Healthy Fast Foods: Ethnic Choices

• Eating kebabs? Go for chunks of whole, lean meat, not meatballs, which often conceal a lot of fat.
• Eating Chinese? Use chopsticks, avoid deep-fried dishes like prawn balls, pancake rolls. Go for steamed foods, plain rice, vegetable dishes, soups.
• Eating Indian? Say no to the deep-fried samosas and pakoras, shun the creamy korma curries and highly sweetened chutneys. More healthy fast foods from the Indian takeaway include tandoori, raita, vegetable dishes, and lentil dal. Chapatis are good, but other breads tend to be high in fat, as do biriani curries, which major on fried rice.
• Eating Italian? Bruschetta and focaccia are oily. Meaty antipasto platters can be very high in fat. Vegetable selections are better, but be sparing with the veg preserved in oil, and go easy on cheese. Pasta is best served with tomato-based sauces rather than creamy recipes like carbonara. Ask for small portions.
• Pizza toppings can be very fatty - choose vegetables over meats, or go for fish or prawns. Say no to deep-dish and stuffed crust. Layered dishes like lasagne and aubergine parmigiana are often high in fat, as is pesto. Tomato-based soups like minestrone are excellent and full of vegetables, but be careful with risotto, often very creamy, and avoid deep-fried calamari or whitebait, and fatty sausages and pepperoni.
• Eating Mexican? Soft tacos are good because they're not fried. Don't choose high-fat chimichangas, taco salad served in deep-fried bowl, or , cheese-stuffed, battered deep fried chillis (chiles rellenos). Dips are often fat-based. Try salsa instead, and dip with fresh vegetable crudites or baked crackers.

Choosing Healthy Fast Foods: Desserts

• All muffins are high in fat, even the fruity ones.
• Water ices and sorbets are the best choices for frozen desserts. Cheap ice creams are highly processed and full of sugar and additives. More expensive brands may contain fewer artificial ingredients, but are generally very high in fat because they're not whipped full of air. Best choice is one small, plain scoop - not a sundae.
• Mousses and souffles contain a lot of air and egg white, and are healthier choices than cheesecakes or gateaux.
• Cream dishes like creme brulee and pannacotta are high in sugar and fat - avoid.

Choosing Healthy Fast Foods: Drinks

• A whirl of whipped cream on your coffee adds another 50-100 calories of pure fat.
• Sweetened syrups in your coffee add a dose of pure sugar - avoid.
• Fizzy drinks, sodas, colas, sweetened teas, juice drinks - all these are packed with additives and sugar, and some brands can contain as much as 100g sugar in a large serving. Drink water - make it sparkling mineral with an added dash of natural fruit juice if you prefer. Tomato juice is another great healthy drink.
• Take milkshakes 'skinny', made with skimmed or semi-skimmed milk. Avoid syrups, whipped cream or ice cream floats.

Wise up on healthy fast foods, then when you do have to eat at a junk food outlet you'll be able to make the best choices you can.

Go from Healthy Fast Foods to Fast Food Facts.

Go from Healthy Fast Foods to Healthy Eating Made Easy.

Good Food Matters

© 2005-2010 healthy-eating-made-easy. All Rights Reserved